I had a question from a Mom the other day, about what she should be working on at home with her preschooler.  With such a plethora of areas and information to choose from, many parents feel like they are drowning with options and ideas. Because of this  I thought I would cover an easy process of  how to decide what will benefit your child the most and get you out of the ocean and on to dry land.

1. Assess your child’s needs.
   1. How many colors, shapes, numbers and letters does your child know?
   2. How does your child play with other children?
   3. How well does your child follow your instruction/instructions of other grownups?
   4. Compared to other children how is your child’s gross and fine motor skills?

2. Pick two to three areas that your child has difficulty with or has less exposure to.
   1. These could both be academic areas or a mixture of social, physical and/or academic areas.
   2. Don’t stress too much about your chosen areas, they will just be the focus for a short time period and mastery is not expected.
3. Begin working on your two to three selected areas.
   1. Talk about the areas to your kids whenever you can. Example: Following Instructions—Did you notice how Timmy did just what he was asked by his Mom? How can you be like Timmy?
   2. Point out anything that pertains to your area in the home and out and about. Example: Shapes—What shape is this plate? A square? A circle?
   3. At least once a week, take the time to do some type of project that focuses on the areas your working on. Coloring pictures, making crafts, visiting friends….
4. Move on to new areas, reviewing old areas when you can.
   1. When your child is doing well with a selected area feel free to move on to another work area.
   2. Review old areas casually but often to help reinforce both short term and long term learning.

These steps can be repeated over and over again, with a few tweeks in subject matter, throughout your child’s life. They will help identify areas they need help with and will put you on the right track for creating an environment of growth and development that will be specific to your child’s needs.  Using this process will also help weed out all of the extra stuff and give you a clear focus on what you are working on.

Now these steps are meant to be pretty vague so that they will continue to work for whatever areas you can think of for a very long time.  With that being said, I also want to equip you with specifics for each area your preschool should be working on right now. So check back with us as we’ll be starting with colors and working  our way through each preschool area of development. See you soon!