The best preschool teachers retain a sense of wonder and excitement. They understand and share a hunger to learn and explore the world. They can adapt their adult wisdom to view life and learning from the perspective of the child. They adapt lessons and information given from the adult perspective of learning objectives and goals to the playful games and activities that appeal to young children. For example, building a butterfly garden allows students to observe the life cycle of butterflies and have a beautiful place to play with lots of sensory input.
The preschool teacher observes students in the room and determines the needs of each student. He adapts lessons to appeal to visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile learners so no child is left behind. He notices which children need additional help and finds ways such as one-on-one teaching and multi-sensory lessons to insure that his students have every opportunity to learn. For example, dancing to learn special concepts and coordination skills can reveal much about child development.
A preschool teacher needs creative language skills that are simple enough for preschoolers to understand. She may use simple, but vivid, adjectives to describe an object; such as a solid, lime green ball covered with little red squiggles. Children love to listen to stories and enjoy the inflection of tone and the funny voices a teacher can use to bring a story to life. She can use familiar stories and rhymes to teach letter sounds, vocabulary words and language skills. She can allow students to retell stories heard in the circle using puppets or other props.
Many preschool lessons involve group activities such as story circles, singing and recognition of letters and numbers. The preschool teacher instructs across curriculum so that one activity may teach multiple subjects. For example, observing butterflies in the butterfly garden teaches the life cycle of butterflies and what they eat; builds colorful language skills as the students describe what they see; develops counting skills as they number all the butterflies in the garden; and advances sorting skills as they count the number of yellow or monarch butterflies.
Preschool teachers may organize the classroom into learning centers so students can engage in independent learning. The learning centers group skills and lesson types together so that the teacher can make the most effective use of resources. For example, learning center one contains art supplies that can be used to complete math worksheets, support art projects and assess story sequencing.