Provide preschoolers with opportunities to handle objects such as counting blocks, puzzles, board games, and play dough. Allow them to observe, touch, and examine all objects used in play.
Create situations that involve pretending and drama and let kids indulge in creative play. For example, provide a few stuffed animals, building blocks and ask the children to play at being in a zoo. Provide pencils, books, crayons, a desk and table and have children enact their version of a classroom.
Use a lot of pictures and photographs in your teaching. Encourage children to draw and paint, and have them explain what their art means. Hang their creations around the classroom or make separate folders to preserve each child's drawings.
Introduce children to the relationship between sounds and letters of the alphabet. Teach them one letter at a time using three dimensional alphabet blocks, and alphabet books and puzzles. Show them how to write the letters and encourage them to identify the letters found in newspaper headlines and magazines.
Tell interesting stories using an interactive manner. Read stories aloud in a dramatic way, with voice modulation and enactment where possible. Teach nursery rhymes and have kids sing along in a chorus. Say a word and ask kids to provide other words that sound the same to teach about rhyming words.
Conduct activities that develop basic math skills in children. For example, use blocks of different shapes and colors to help preschoolers understand the concept of sorting and classifying objects. Spread all the blocks on a table, and ask kids to make separate piles of blue, green and red blocks. When they complete this, ask them to make a pile of blue triangles, or red circles.