PRESCHOOLERS MAY

• Ask others for information (“What is that?” “Why is the moon round?”).
• Use “Why” to get additional information.
• Develop personal interests (trains, farm animals).
• Ask a peer to join in play.
• Join a play activity already in progress.
• Select new activities during play time (select characters for dress-up).
• Find and use materials to follow through on an idea (blocks for building a tower, blank paper and crayons for drawing about a story or experience).
• Engage in discussions about new events and occurrences (“Why did this happen?”)
• Ask questions about changes in his/her world.
• Look for new information and want to know more about personal interests.
• Develop increasing complexity and persistence in using familiar materials.
• Form a plan for an activity and act on it.
• Tell the difference between appropriate and inappropriate (or dangerous) risk-taking.

YOU CAN

• Provide stimulating materials geared toward expressed interests (build a stable in a cardboard box for toy horses).
• Encourage children to play together.
• Modify group activities to ensure participation of children with special needs.
• Provide a learning environment that reflects the children’s and families’ cultures.
• Build on child’s interests by providing books, field trips, and other experiences related to similar topics.
• Provide child with resources to answer questions (if child wonders about dinosaurs, find a dinosaur book at the library or if possible, search a child-appropriate website together).
• Explore non-fiction books with child and demonstrate where information can be found (in the glossary, graphs, pictures, captions, etc.).
• Provide opportunities for child to observe and listen to adult conversations about why things happen.
• Provide opportunities for child to interact with a variety of people (peers, elders, shopkeepers, neighbors).
• Provide opportunities for child to form, design, and undertake activities and projects.

PRESCHOOLERS MAY

• Focuses on tasks of interest to him/her.
• Remains engaged in an activity for at least 5 to 10 minutes at a time.
• Completes favorite tasks over and over again.
• Persists in trying to complete a task after previous attempts have failed (finish a puzzle, build a tower).
• Uses at least two different strategies to solve a problem.
• Participates in meal time with few distractions.
• Works on a task over a period of time, leaving and returning to it (block structure).
• Shifts attention back to activity at hand after being distracted.
• Focuses on projects despite distractions.
• Accepts reasonable challenges and continues through frustration.
• Cooperates with a peer or adult on a task.

YOU CAN

• Be available and respond when child encounters problems, without being intrusive (“Can I help with the top of the tower?”).
• Comment positively on child’s persistence and concentration.
• Try using interventions that the child suggests when problems are encountered; talk with child about what worked and did not work.
• Encourage child story telling.
• Provide increasingly complex games (puzzles, matching and sorting and other activities).
• Create projects for child to work on over time (plant seeds and nurture them to watch them grow).
• Provide opportunities for child to take on activities or responsibilities that last more than one day (feed the gerbil this week).
• Provide adequate time and support for child to complete increasingly complex games or tasks.
• Provide opportunities for child to work successfully with others.

PRESCHOOLERS MAY

• Ask a peer to join in play.
• Join a play activity already in progress, with assistance.
• Select new activities during play time (select characters for dress-up).
• Offer to help with chores (sweeping sand from the floor, helping to clean up spilled juice).
• Find and use materials to follow through on an idea (blocks for building a tower, blank paper and crayons for drawing about a story or experience).
• Make decisions about what activity or materials to work with from selection offered.

YOU CAN

• Encourage child to pursue favorite activities.
• Demonstrate and explain to child that taking reasonable risks is acceptable.
• Facilitate play in groups.
• Modify group activities to ensure participation of children with special needs.
• Acknowledge when child initiates activities and point out the positive outcomes.
• Provide non-critical environments that create opportunities for child to initiate activities.

PRESCHOOLERS MAY

• Invent new activities or games.
• Use imagination to create a variety of ideas.
• Create acceptable rules for group activities.
• Make up words, songs, or stories.
• Express ideas through art construction, movement, or music.
• Engage in extensive pretend play that includes role play (play “house” or “explorers”).
• Investigate and experiment with materials.
• Represent reality in a variety of ways (pretend play, drawing).
• Invent projects and work on them.
• Engage in role play.

YOU CAN

• Ask open-ended questions to encourage creative thinking.
• Provide tasks where the goal is trying different strategies rather than right or wrong answers.
• Ask child how a story may have ended differently (“What if…”).
• Provide opportunities for child to create and complete projects in own way.
• Demonstrate and explain how to be flexible about changes in routines and plans (“if the pool is closed, we can go to the park instead”).
• Provide child with access to artists and artwork from their own and other cultures.
• Maintain file of creative works for child to periodically revisit and comment on.
• Display a variety of children’s creative work instead of mass-produced or teacher-created display.
• Engage child in drawing a series of pictures that represent or illustrate an experience or a story he/she made up.
• Play make-believe games with child, including games that introduce the child to diverse people, places, and cultures (“If you were a frog, what would you think about the rain outside?”).
• Ask open-ended questions that create an interaction and dialogue with child (“What do you think about ...?).
• Provide a variety of creative outlets for child (opportunities to dance, paint, build, make music, invent stories and act them out).
• Encourage child to invent stories.

PRESCHOOLERS MAY

• Tell others about events that happened in the past.
• Represent things in environment with available materials, moving from simple to complex representations (recreate pictures of a house, bridge, road with blocks).
• Think out loud and talk through a situation.
• Work out problems mentally rather than through trial and error.
• Use a variety of methods to express thoughts and ideas (discussion, art activities).
• Demonstrate long-term memory of meaningful events and interesting ideas.
• Describe or act out a memory of a situation or action.
• Seek information for further understanding.
• Use multiple sources of information to complete projects and acquire new information, with assistance.
• Plan activities and set goals based on past experience.
• Demonstrate beginning understanding of what others are thinking, their intentions, or motivations.

YOU CAN

• Talk with child about what he/she has seen, heard, or done.
• Provide child with time to process experiences and information.
• Help child remember experiences with photographs, mementos, and souvenirs.
• Ask open-ended questions that encourage reflection (“What if...? or how else could you do this?”).
• Provide opportunities for child to express thought through a variety of methods.
• Provide opportunities for child to recall past experiences in planning new activities and setting new goals.
• Provide opportunities for child to share the lessons learned from his/her experiences (story time).
• Support the child to perceive and understand other’s perspectives.
• Provide a variety of problem-solving experiences.
• Use vocabulary that is related to problem solving (“You had a problem building that tower, but the bigger block makes it easier.”).