Create a cozy learning environment in one corner of your room for a literacy learning center. Provide a small bookshelf stocked with picture books and writing materials along with a small table and chair and pillows or a child-sized couch so preschoolers can curl up and enjoy their book. Add a basket full of letter manipulatives to finish off your literacy center. If you have an aide in the room, this is a perfect place to have her available to read stories to the children, help them practice letters or provide a computer or CD player with headphones for students to listen to books on tape.
Create your art learning center in an area of the room with tile or linoleum or lay plastic mats over carpet so the preschooler's creativity does not end up damaging the classroom. Add an easel with smocks, paints and paintbrushes as well as plenty of paper, crayons, markers, glitter and craft supplies like glue sticks and cotton balls to give preschoolers plenty of room to express their creativity. You can choose to set up an art or craft project of the day, allow for unstructured art creation or do a mixture of the two during your literacy center to give preschoolers a combination of following directions and creative expression.
Gather dress up clothes, props, play furniture, dolls, scarves and other accessories to fill up your dramatic play learning center. Children exercise their imagination and learn to work in groups as they collaborate to create elaborate scenarios together. Try to add props related to any specific unit studies, such as dinosaur puppets or stuffed animals during a dinosaur unit and watch as preschoolers express their learning through play. Add lots of blankets and clips to create forts and houses for extra fun.
When preschoolers learn, they need to get their hands dirty and involved so create a learning center dedicated to letting students touch and manipulate. Add bins of play dough or clay with cookie cutters, plastic knives, child scissors and rolling pins as well as large bins of dried rice or beans to sift and dig through. Provide stiff cardboard cards with holes for students to practice their sewing with yarn or shoe laces, puzzles, Legos and blocks. If you are using special math or science manipulatives, add them to your manipulative learning center so preschoolers can have extra practice.