Young Preschool Class
The Denver Cooperative Preschool’s Older Preschool Program provides children with the opportunity to explore their environment as well as their understanding of the world and themselves. With instruction primarily rooted in play, children are encouraged to consider how they feel, make observations about what they see and ask questions of their peers and educators. Teachers document each child’s growth using observation and the Colorado Early Learning and Developmental Guidelines.
Throughout the year, educators select guidelines to focus on with the entire class. These are based on what the group may benefit from the most as a whole. These guidelines are updated three times a year and inform a significant portion of the curriculum during this time. As the school year progresses and teachers have spent time documenting the progress of the students in their care, they select individual goals and record any goals the families may have for their child. The resulting documentation is compiled in each child’s individual portfolio along with all of their conference reports. This helps parents and teachers look back on where a child has been and appreciate their child’s journey and how far they have come. Each family is invited to keep this portfolio when their child finishes their time at DCP.
Here are some examples of the learning domains from the Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines that we frequently focus on during the school year in Older Preschool. These learning targets primarily involve social emotional development and developing and strengthening a child’s problem solving skills. These skills are foundational in cultivating the ability to remain in a classroom environment for years to come:
Social and Emotional Development
1. Relationships with Adults & Peers – The healthy relationships and interactions with adults and peers.
1.1 Engage in and maintain positive relationships and interactions with adults.*
1.2 Engage in prosocial and cooperative behavior with adults.
1.3 Engage in and maintain positive interactions and relationships with other children.*
1.4 Establish secure relationships with adults.
1.5 Engage in cooperative play with other children
1.6 Use basic problem-solving skills to resolve conflicts with other children
3. Emotional Functioning – A healthy range of emotional expression and learning positive alternatives to aggressive or isolating behaviors
3.1 Express a broad range of emotions and recognize these emotions in self and others.*
3.2 Express care and concern toward others
3.3 Manage emotions with increasing independence
5. Cognitive Self-Regulation (Executive Functioning) – The ability to regulate attention and impulses.
5.1 Demonstrate an increasing ability to control impulses.*
5.2 Maintain focus and sustain attention with minimal adult support.*
5.3 Persist in tasks
5.4 Hold information in mind and manipulate it to perform tasks.
5.5 Demonstrate flexibility in thinking and behavior.*
Logic and Reasoning
1. Reasoning and Problem-Solving – The ability to recognize, understand, and analyze a problem and draw on knowledge or experience to seek solutions to a problem.
1.1 Seek multiple solutions to a question, task, or problem.
1.2 Recognize cause-and-effect relationships.
1.3 Classify, compare, and contrast objects, events, and experiences.
1.4 Use past knowledge to build new knowledge
1.5 Identify problems and search for solutions by asking questions during collaborative explorations of the topic; begin to state facts about the topic.*
2. Symbolic Representation – The use of symbols or objects to represent something else.
2.1 Represent people, places, or things through drawings, movement, and three-dimensional objects.
2.2 Engage in pretend play and act out roles.
2.3 Begin to identify key features of reality versus fantasy in stories, pictures, and events.
Approaches to Learning
1. Initiative and Curiosity – An interest in varied topics and activities, a desire to learn, creativity, and independence in learning
1.1 Engage in independent activities.
1.2 Make choices and communicate these to adults and other children
1.3 Independently identify and seek things to complete activities or tasks, such as gathering art supplies to make a mask or gathering cards to play a matching activity
1.4 Plan play scenarios, such as dramatic play or construction, by establishing roles for play, using appropriate materials, and generating appropriate scenarios to be enacted
1.5 Ask questions and seek new information
1.6 Be willing to participate in new activities or experiences even if they are perceived as challenging.
1.7 Demonstrate eagerness to learn about and discuss a range of topics, ideas, and activities
In addition to the guidelines that are selected for concentration by teachers throughout the school year, there are many domains that teachers regularly include in weekly lesson plans, through our everyday classroom experience and document the progress of as well. These include:
Physical Development and Health
2. Gross Motor Skills – The control of large muscles for movement, navigation, and balance.
3. Fine Motor Skills – The control of small muscles for such purposes as using utensils, self-care, building, and exploring.
Language Development
1. Attending and Understanding – The ability to comprehend or understand language.
2. Communicating and Speaking – The ability to use language.
Literacy Knowledge and Skills
1. Print and Alphabet Knowledge – The interest in books and their characteristics, and knowledge of the alphabet
2. Phonological Awareness – An awareness that language can be broken into words, syllables, and smaller pieces of sound.
3. Comprehension and Text Structure - The ability to understand and get meaning from stories and information from books and other texts.
4. Writing – The familiarity with writing implements, conventions, and emerging skills to communicate through written representations, symbols, and letters.
Mathematics Knowledge and Skills
1. Number Concepts and Quantities – The understanding that numbers represent quantities and have ordinal properties (number words represent a rank order, particular size, or position in a list.
2. Operations and Algebraic Thinking - The use of numbers to describe relationships and solve problems.
3. Measurement and Data – The understanding of attributes and relative properties of objects as related to size, capacity, and area.
4. Geometry and Spatial Sense – The understanding of shapes, their properties, and how objects are related to one another.
Science Knowledge and Skills
1. Scientific Inquiry – The skills to observe and collect information and use it to ask questions, predict, explain, and draw conclusions.
2. Reasoning and Problem Solving – Gathering information to make predictions, conduct investigations and experiments, draw conclusions, and analyze and communicate results.
3. Life Science – Make sense of natural phenomena and solve problems that require understanding how individual organisms are configured and how these structures function to support life, growth, behavior and reproduction.
Social Studies Knowledge and Skills
1. History and Events – The understanding that events happened in the past and how these events relate to one’s self, family, and community
2. Geography – Apply geographic representations and perspectives to analyze human movement, spatial patterns, systems, and the connections and relationships among them.
3. Economics – Understand the allocation of scarce resources in societies through analysis of individual choice, market interaction, and public policy.
4. Civics – Analyze the origins, structures, and functions of governments to evaluate the impact on citizens and the global society.
Creative Arts Expression (Dance)
1. Movement – The use of the body to move to music and express oneself
2. Create, Compose, and Choreograph – Using the dance elements of space, time, and energy to explore, improvise, and develop movement phrases, sequences and dances.
3. Historical and Cultural Context – Understanding the global and cultural relevance of dance.
4. Reflect, Connect, and Respond – Reflecting upon dance, connecting it with other disciplines, responding to it to discuss and analyze dance as art.
Creative Arts Expression (Drama and Theater Arts)
1. Create - Creating and forming theatrical works, interpreting theatrical works for performance and design, and developing characters and analyzing roles.
2. Perform – Correctly follow directions involving their own position in space, such as “Stand up” and “Move forward.”
3. Respond - Responding to the artistic and scientific knowledge of conventions, cultures, styles, genres, theories, and technologies needed to know better choices and best practices
Creative Arts Expression (Music)
1. Music Expression – The use of voice and instruments to create sounds.
2. Creation of Music – Compose, improvise, and arrange sounds and musical ideas to communicate purposeful intent
3. Theory of Music – Read, write, and analyze the elements of music through a variety of means to demonstrate musical literacy
4. Aesthetic Valuation of Music – Evaluate and respond to music using criteria to make informed musical decisions
Creative Arts Expression (Visual Arts)
1. Observe and Learn to Comprehend – Identify art in daily surroundings.
2. Envision and Critique to Reflect – Evaluate the effectiveness of what is made during the creative process
3. Invent and Discover to Create – Use different skills to generate works of art for functional, expressive, conceptual, and social/cultural purposes.
4. Relate and Connect to Transfer - Make new connections to their own environments, cultures, and stories through the process of making art.
A glimpse into our daily routine:
8:30 - The class begins at 8:30 am. As students arrive, they are asked to help care for their belongings by removing their lunch and water bottle from their backpack and place them in their predetermined place for the day.
8:30-8:45 – During this time, as the class is arriving, the present children have the choice to choose a book to look at in the library or work in their journal on the circle time carpet.
8:45 – Once the class has arrived and is settled, teachers ask the class to put their books and journals away and join us on the rug for a morning meeting. During this time, we sing a song or play a game welcoming everyone to school for the day. This is an excellent opportunity for children to notice which of their classmates are there and who is missing. We often use meeting times as a chance to practice social emotional skills.
9:00-10:00 - After we have finished our morning meeting, we go outside. We feel that in addition to structured, planned playtime, it is important for children to have the time and freedom to choose what they are interested in doing. We have a variety of outdoor learning materials, including shovels and buckets, pots and pans that go with our mud kitchen, sidewalk chalk, wheel barrels, a wagon, balls, hula hoops, small traffic cones and bikes with helmets.
10:00 – Snack. We always eat snack outside if the weather permits. Our snacks are planned by the administration team with the help of a nutritionist. We encourage healthy and safe eating habits at DCP.
10:15 – 11:45 – Choice time.
Choice time is a time of day that many of our students look forward to the most. They are presented with planned activities the teachers have set up and invited to give them a try. However, children are free to do the activities in their own way, deciding how the materials provided work best for them. We work as hard as we can to find a way to say yes at DCP. If a child has a vision for something they are working on and asks for different materials to use in completing this objective, we do our best to provide the child with the supplies they need. For example, although we have given the children tempera paint to paint a picture, if the children begin to use the paint as a sensory material, squishing it between their fingers or painting their arms rather than the paper, we encourage them to continue. We observe the children at play and use their interests to help guide future curriculum planning.
Choice time is intentionally our longest chunk of time during the day. This allows the children to explore for long periods of time, often extending their play and enhancing their creativity. During choice time, we offer (i) a science center equipped with magnifying glasses and many natural artifacts, (ii) a dramatic play area that transitions through themes based on the interests demonstrated by the class, (iii) a library for reading connecting with teachers and friends, (iv) an art area, (v) a math and manipulatives area, (vi) a sensory area with a water table (in non-COVID times) for a variety of sensory play, (vii) a literacy area for children to learn about literacy and experiment with writing, and (viii) a very well equipped block area, with a variety of types of blocks that are regularly rotated, marble runs, ramps, and a wooden train set.
During choice time, children are invited to use any of the materials available in our classroom. The only expectations are that each child treats everyone with kindness and respect and that every child participates in cleaning up the classroom when choice time is over for the day.
11:45 – Clean up time. Teachers lead by example and encourage children to clean up by asking individual children directly to help pick up specific items. Children who are wandering during this time are redirected toward cleaning up with encouragement to work together with the group and care for the classroom.
11:50 – The class has a quick meeting on the circle time rug while a teacher sets up lunch. During this time we may read a story, sing a song, have a dance party or do a group activity.
12:00 - Lunch time.
12:30-12:45 - As students finish up eating lunch, we ask them to close their lunch boxes and to try to independently put their sheets on their naptime cot. Once these jobs are done, they are invited to go get a couple books to look at quietly on their naptime cot.
12:45 – 1:45 - Rest time. During this time we play books on tape and encourage the class to practice quietly resting their bodies. After a short rest time, we allow children to play quietly on their cots with manipulatives or drawing materials.
1:45 – We work together as a class to clean up the classroom from rest time. One of the highlights for the children is to work with a partner to remove the cots from the classroom.
2:00 - 2:55 Snack and Outside Time. As long as the weather permits, we have snack outside, followed by free play
2:55 – We call the class back over and have a quick closing circle together. During this time we sing a goodbye song that includes the name the class voted on and chose for themselves.
3:00 - End of school. Children are released to pre-approved caregivers with a daily report in their backpacks about what they did that day.
In addition, our Older Preschool teachers have frequent communications, in person, over the phone or via Zoom and advise and assist parents with kindergarten applications and choices.