The Preschool curriculum

The Preschool curriculum

The Preschool curriculum is the type of material and lessons that your child is taught at the preschool level. At the tender age, the brain develops at a rapid pace, which is why children must be enrolled in a school with a curriculum founded on the ideals of functionality, relevance, productivity, and creativity(Reed & Walker, 2014). This will influence their cognitive, social, and emotional behaviors in the long-run.

The Bank Street preschool program is one such curriculum for preschool that focuses on diversity. This model is based on the theories of Jean Piget, which campaign for constructivism and active-learning, Erik Erikson’s emotional development, and John Dewey’s action learning.

According to Jones (2010), “The approach is based on the premise that children must be actively involved in acquiring competence through choice, active investigation, independent pursuit, and learning through discovery” (p. 116). In this program, teachers act as facilitators and use play as a standard to create a climate that encourages the learners to explore their environment. In this teaching model, children follow a daily schedule that helps form their independence as learners. The teachers observe them through different settings and record data using a play-based assessment trans-disciplinary model.

The Bank Street developmental-Interaction curriculum design support the types of content, activities, and competencies appropriate for the preschool audience because it meets the four fundamental criteria which are;

1. In this preschool program, the teachers who are facilitators put the students in different settings in the environment to review their pattern of behaviors and developmental skills then grade them according to their competences.
2. Scope and Sequence. The program covers the social and academic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics on a daily schedule.
3. Activities and Instruction. The events in this program are diverse such as field trips, lab work, dramatic play, building blocks, and the teachers’ task is to be a guide, but ultimately the students are given room to self-explore.
4. Progress monitoring is done through an evaluation of the student’s interactions in the various aspects of the model.

This curriculum is lacking in the sense that it might not be suitable for children with disabilities or those with delayed developments because the standard for progress monitoring does not define how assessment should be done for children in this category. Learning objectives need to be re-evaluated for the specific difficulty to suit children with disabilities. The appraisal criteria should also be modified to that level. The instructional design component that is easiest to develop in this curriculum design is the play and exploration because, at a young age, it is easy to involve kids in a valid form of instruction (Jones, 2010). In this model, children develop their skills through imitation. It is easy to impress on them the ideals of learning that are suitable for improving their observation and analysis of the environment. The most difficult instructional design to implement in this model is when the teacher plays the role of a facilitator to create a sense of community. At a young age, children need an authority figure to direct them teachers playing an observatory role gives the students free rein, which can be a downside in terms of mentoring. Also, the program needs extensive teacher training to implement.