Morning circle is a common routine in most preschool classrooms. Students say goodbye to their parents and begin their school day by gathering around the Morning Board. Usually, the teacher leads the class in looking at the calendar and identifying the day of the week, date and month. This helps young children begin learning months of the year and number patterns. Sometimes weather and season are also mentioned during the morning routine. Teachers can play games with the students, asking them to think of words to describe the weather, such as sunny, windy, cold, cloudy or stormy.
Many preschool classrooms incorporate educational games into lessons to guide the learning process. Since children are typically taught to write in first or second grade, lessons in preschool focus on material students can speak or identify without reading or writing. Colors and numbers are often the subject of most classroom games. Preschool children also enjoy learning to write their name and, as such, they need to learn the alphabet to help them. Play alphabet matching games with the class by hanging small cards, each with a letter of the alphabet on it, with a clothespin to a line across the room. On a parallel clothesline, hang pictures of animals or objects that start with each letter of the alphabet. The student's task is to match each letter with the picture on the opposite clothesline.
A big part of preschool is developing young learners' motor skills and familiarizing them with books and reading. Puzzles and shape-matching are excellent for mastering this skill, because they let children touch and handle each piece, and manually make them fit based on what the object looks like and the fit of the pieces. Cutting and pasting with craft material is also helpful for small children as they learn hand-eye coordination. Young children should always use safety scissors and be supervised when using them.
To tie all the skills of preschool together, engage students in arts and crafts activities. Allow students to be creative with a variety of materials like crayons, colored pencils, glue, paint or stamps. Choose activities that are easy for small hands and limited artistic ability. Collage activities or messy abstract art ideas are great for little ones and facilitate learning colors and shapes. Use paper plates for circles, empty paper rolls for cylinders ,and pre-drawn templates for shapes.