We believe that parents are a child’s first and most important teachers, and we therefore aim to include parents in the learning process and encourage them to actively participate in their child’s education. Discovery Preschool offers many opportunities for parent involvement throughout the school year.
The following list offers some possible suggestions for parent involvement opportunities and activities you can do at home. However, we also encourage parents to develop their own ideas for supporting and participating in their child’s preschool education.
- Sharing knowledge, experiences, and careers with the children when parents have expertise related to the curriculum topics;
- Sharing any other interests or talents with the children, such as playing a musical instrument or doing a special crafts project;
- Communicating regularly with teachers about their child’s progress;
- Providing feedback, suggestions, and constructive criticism on how we can improve our preschool program;
- Reading daily to your child;
- Give your children a lot of life experiences: go to a children’s museum, trips to the library, age appropriate plays and concerts, supervised play dates, ethnic restaurants, camping, hiking, cooking, gardening…….. These experiences aid in developing early literacy because they enable your child to relate to events and places described in storybooks;
- Give older children age appropriate household chores such as dusting, sorting laundry, taking care of pets, setting and clearing the table, etc. This gives them responsibility and makes them feel competent, needed and a part of the family;
- On occasion, read books that do not have a lot of illustrations. This allows children to use their own imagination when creating images of the characters and events in the book;
- Limit screen time which includes TV, computers and video games. Place a higher value on outside play, board games, family outings, sports and any activities that allow children to get exercise, use their imaginations and interact with friends and family;
- It is okay for a child to get “bored” once in awhile. Ballet, soccer, gymnastics, etc. are all great enrichments but should be limited so children are not spending their entire day in pre programmed activities. They need to learn how to be self-starters, creative and become leaders. Often times a child who is bored is not self-motivated and he is waiting for someone to tell him what to do and how to spend his time;
- Give children choices whenever possible. They can choose outfits, what vegetable to serve at dinner, whether to have their story time before or after their bath to name a few. The children who thrive in a Montessori environment are the ones who are self-motivated and able to choose work to keep themselves occupied with appropriate activities and behavior;
- Keep in mind that our language program is phonics based: if you want to reinforce the letters your child is learning, use the letter sound, not the letter name. We introduce lower case letters first and the short vowel sounds.