PRESCHOOL YEARS

This is a very active and exciting time for children.  They are curious, and find joy in exploring, doing new activities, and looking for new experiences.  Children at this age go from "Knowing" things to really "Understanding" them, and skills in thinking, language, and use of imagination flourish.

At three years of age, children interpret reality very literally in terms of immediate perceptions, and the only perspective they can  make is their own.

"I am the center of the universe. Everything that happens involves me and happens to me." This "egocentric" perspective also means that all things happen in the present: NOW. As children move through the next few years, their thinking becomes more flexible, and they begin to take another's perspective.  They also start to have a sense of time and history.

The development described above happens with maturation, interaction with people, play experience, and interaction with materials such as toys.

Dramatic or creative play is especially important for preschoolers.

As children remember something that happened yesterday and act it out, they create a past for themselves.  As they imagine fantasy role and pretend to be a character - Mom, Superman, a sky-diver, a firefighter - they are creating a future for themselves.  With a lot of practice, memory, and creative imagination, children begin to understand the past, present, AND future.   Use of face, make-up and dress-up clothes, books, dolls, and interaction with other children and adults, all support the development of these kinds of thinking skills.

Games and activities with items to sort, classify, compare, contrast and match

further children's learning of simple match concepts and ready them to begin recognizing written numerals and letters.  Game play with turn-taking and use of simple logic skills (such as dominoes), are valuable for recognizing "same" and "different" characteristics.

In order to learn concepts, children need to have all their senses and their whole bodies involved.  The more concrete their experiences, the easier it will be to understand their world.

They need toys, and other objects that they can hold, move and manipulate.  for example, the simple household activity of setting the table and matching one plate, one fork, one knife, and one cup strengthens the child's grasp on one-to-one correspondence, a pre-math concept.

Language has developed

from babbling sounds, simple words and simple sentences of two, or three words to longer sentences and telling stories on a very sophisticated level.  Lots of conversation, opportunities to make up stories, tape-recording their own voices, and listening to books and music will further expand this growth.  Most three-year-olds can carry on  very adult-sounding conversations.  Beware of their tendency to interpret words in a very literal ways.   Words need to mean exactly what they say, and meanings will be directly connected to the child's own experiences.  Though they may fool you by repeating your words, their interpretation may be different than yours.  They will kow, for example, that you "give toy demonstrations,"  but they will be fuzzy about what a "demonstration" is and what you actually do there.

Physically, three-, four-, and five-year-olds have good command of their bodies and are in the process of smoothing out their muscle movements (large and small).

Therefore, they need places to run, jump, climb and swing.  A three-year-old seldom keeps still longer than five minutes.  They are also beginning to understand their place in relation to other physical objects in space (they know "up", "down", "in", "out") and are developing knowledge about size relationships They know that houses are 'bigger" that they are.  In order to improve coordination and the use of small muscles, they will need pens, pencils, crayons, markers, and large sheets of paper on which to write and draw.  Scissors, hole punchers, and staplers will provide an added bonus to this paper "work."  Constructive toys, puzzles, blocks, and all sorts of things to manipulate add to the refined movements they are beginning to master with their hands.

Children in this age group are very social and sociable.

They are interested in everybody and may ask questions of those they meet in order to find out for themselves what is happening.  They are beginning to move out into the world and need to know that adults are available as a safe base to which they can return.  As they try out their own ideas and succeed, their self-esteem and sense of self enlarges and becomes stronger.  Our careful selection of toys, which attention to elements that might be frustrating, supports this growth.

They desire to express oneself is also flourishing and is evidence..

of a stronger interest  in personal identity.  Arts and crafts materials, constructive toys, and dramatic play will facilitate this growth. Pencils, pens, crayons, colored chalk, paste, glue, and small scissors become appropriate.  Children will also enjoy easels and sheets of paper to paint on with tempra paint and water colors.  Clay and play dough offers hours of pleasurable molding.  Skill in the use of these materials will improve with lots of practice, and will still require supervision so that they experience is a positive one.

As children engage in dramatic and fantasy play, they are "fleshing out" their self-image and trying themselves out in pretend parts and situations. 

As they play with others - both adults and children - they are forming social relationships, learning to negotiate, developing language, acting in and directing drama, and practicing other skills they are beginning to master.  Because imaginative play serves to unite so much of the growth accomplishment of this age, it is the single most important activity in which preschool children can take part.  Many of the Discovery Toy Products support this development.

When children practice crossing and re-crossing the lines between reality and fantasy, they establish the differences more firmly in their thinking, and begin to understand they are two distinct and separate worlds.  This understanding helps them to further emerge from the "here and now" into the larger world.