While their fine motor skills evolve the children dig and pour in the sensory table, paint, scribble, and express graphically on an easel, paper, or other materials. The world is full of things to discover for the Nidos as they move and dance to music, discover insects, leaves and flowers, and begin sorting and collecting things they find in the playground.

While your child becomes more vocal and begins to put sentences together, our teachers create opportunities for conversations to help expand your child’s comprehension and literacy skills.

The environment is arranged so that children are exposed to their written name, establish a daily flow, create peer relationships, understand emotions and start to express their thoughts and ideas in simple sentences. By encouraging communication between the children they begin to understand the dynamics of a classroom community.

Our educators share stories that help build new vocabulary and also instill the interest to read. The teachers connect stories with objects and events in children’s lives so that they may begin to understand that print and pictures have a meaning.

A variety of opportunities are offered for children to experiment with art and drawing as they are able to make lines, zigzags, make a series of scribbles and begin to give meaning to the symbols they create. Educators create a rich environment to offer various possibilities to recognize common symbols, some letters, sometimes the first letter of their names, and drawing lines that begin looking like letters and shapes.

Educators begin to ask open-ended questions and plan brainstorming discussions to encourage children to verbalize their ideas and promote conversations amongst them. During these discussions the teachers take notes or make recordings to document children’s thinking. As children create theories and ask questions projects begin to emerge. Through projects children develop cognitive skills such as problem solving, collaboration, understanding cause and effect, sharing and how to be a member of a group.

Teachers prepare environments that encourage interactions between the children. The children exchange knowledge as they engage in conversations. The teachers ask open-ended questions to deepen children’s discussions of topics and to support the evolution of children’s theories. Teachers’ and children’s intentionalities are shared with one another as a network of ideas is developed enabling both to be active participants of the learning process. While your child learns new words and fine-tunes their articulation they communicate in simple sentences, begin initiating conversations, display a desire to talk about their interests, and can relate personal experiences with others with the support of their teacher. Most children at this age express themselves in sentences and are able to recite simple rhymes and ask questions.

Considering that children of the three’s are still making sense of the world around them using all of their senses our educators continue to expose them to many sensorial materials such as paint and clay. These open-ended materials support the children in developing divergent thinking, problem solving skills, and creativity.

As children’s drawings become more detailed and representational children begin to tell stories through them. This, in turn, helps them to understand that print carries a message and the words we speak can be written and read; that stories have a beginning, middle, and an end. During the year scribbles begin to appear more like symbols and letters, and children may string several of these “letters” together to form words. They become aware of the uses for writing and may dictate words for the teachers to write down. Teachers are able to support this process by setting up provocations around the spaces of the classroom that invite children to explore the world of the written code: books, notepads and writing tools, labels, maps, and more. Tracing names and numbers, categorizing shapes and the recognition of patterns are also introduced to support the development of emergent literacy skills. We support children in the discovery of the meaning print holds by creating provocations and situations that awaken their affinity for and interest toward written communication. To strengthen their growing understanding of language, children are encouraged to recognize key ideas and details of stories, understand positional relations and vocabulary terms as well as learn to develop hypotheses based on observations, questions, and investigations.

While their gross motor skills become stronger activities such as running, throwing and catching a ball, and dancing are a source of great joy. They begin to challenge themselves further and it is common to see them outside in the playground climbing up and jumping down. Children love to feel a sense of accomplishment and putting a puzzle together, painting, and drawing are all ways they demonstrate their growing abilities.

At the age of four your child is constructing their knowledge of written language. They want to know what words in their environment say and are able to recognize many letters. By the end of this year many children understand that letters represent the sounds in spoken words and may associate some letters with their sounds. Most children also write some legible letters and know that writing goes from left-to-right and top to bottom. When your child draws or paints they begin to represent detailed aspects of their imagination as well as begin to incorporate letters and words to describe them.

Your child’s capacity for learning math concepts increases at this age. They can successfully use language to compare and describe objects and shapes. Children of the four’s know days of the week, months and the seasons.

They are able to walk, climb, jump, hop, skip, march and gallop skillfully at this age. They have also improved their ability to throw, catch, kick and bounce balls. Four-year-olds enjoy dancing and are able to move rhythmically and easily. Their fine motor skills have also improved therefore supporting their ability to hold writing tools. As their hand-eye coordination develops, dressing and undressing themselves is mastered.

Four-year-olds are very curious and use their imaginations to help understand the world around them. They become complex thinkers through predictions, and their teachers provide supportive information and opportunities for experimentations of trial and error observations. Our teachers value and respect these abilities and offer opportunities to explore in spaces that invite the children to utilize the collection of data and graphing, the class of the four’s begins to use science and engineering practices to better understand their communities, economic and ecosystems as well as the physical earth in which they exist. As the children engage in different explorations where their interests are taken into account, the teachers facilitate learning through questions and providing appropriate tools and materials that will further their research.

As children explore and develop relationships they build an understanding of learn what causes certain feelings and realize that others may react differently to the same situations. Because of this children begin to further progress in more complex social interactions such as joining in organized group play.

*VPK is available for children of the Four’s