All About Preschoolers
Research-Based
The All About Preschoolers curriculum is based on many years of developmental research and findings that show that children are complete developing beings who learn in a variety of ways and do best when they have opportunities that are engaging and challenging but not frustrating, which plenty of learning through enriched play with teachers who use many approaches to guide and speed their learning.
Grounded in ECERS-R
It is likely that, if the curriculum is carried out with reasonable faith to what is written, any classroom would receive high scores on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R) because the authors carefully considered the requirements of the scale as they designed All About Preschoolers.
Where to Use It
All About Preschoolers is meant to be used in preschool classrooms, where the majority of children are 4-year-olds. If 3-year-olds are included in the preschool, the more flexibility and individualized experiences should be provided for them. It can also be used in kindergartens because of the open-ended, individualized approach taken with children.
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Who Can Use It
With over 600 photographs depicting the use of the curriculum in the classroom environment, All About Preschoolers can be used by any preschool teaching staff, including experienced and new teachers, teachers with higher levels of education as well as many teachers with less than a four-year degree.
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How to Use It
All About Preschoolers combines the freedom to choose each unit based on what will interest the children, with the specific instruction to prepare you for those hectic scheduling/planning periods! The authors of AAP have provided a comprehensive curriculum, complete with things to say during group time, suggested activities, songs, chants, and even curriculum plans! After the first 2 units, the 18 theme-based curriculum units can be used non-sequentially. It can be used either as a stand alone or supplemental curriculum.
18 Theme-Based Units
Unit 1: Taking Care of Our Classroom
This unit gives children an introduction to everyone in the class; what is in the classroom for them to use; how materials are taken from shelves, played with, and put away; the daily schedule; and how routines are handled.
Unit 2: Taking Care of Ourselves
This unit gives children health information and teaches basic hygiene skills to reduce the spread of contagious illnesses.
Unit 3: Fun with Friends
This unit gives a deeper understanding of how to get along well with others, learn how to recognize emotions, how to match printed words with pictures, and how to complete simple graphs.
Unit 4: The Sun
This unit covers basic scientific information about one of the most important things in the natural world — the Sun. Children will recognize letters and numbers, hear phonetic sounds, and make simple graphs.
Unit 5: Exploring Our Sense of Sight
Through books and songs, discussion, simple experiments, charts, and matching games, this unit explores how we use our eyes to recognize differences in color, shape, and size, and the importance of taking care of our eyes and about different sight abilities, in both people and animals.
Unit 6: We Are the Same; We Are Different
In this unit children learn acceptance and understanding of the diversity found in the people of the world, as well as within their own communities or classroom.
Unit 7: Discovering Birds
This unit introduces children to birds by studying basic concepts of the anatomy of a bird, seeds, and the sequence of hatching eggs. They will discover things that birds like to eat and how they build nests.
Unit 8: Our Senses of Smell and Taste
Through books and songs, discussion, simple experiments, charts, and music and movement, children will study how we recognize the senses of smell and taste.
Unit 9: Our Families and Our Homes
This unit covers the relationships in families: Who makes up a family, how families are similar and different, the roles of family members, and their various activities and routines.
Unit 10: Amazing Water
In this unit, children learn why water is important, its characteristics, how we use it, its role in our travels, and about conservation of water as a natural resource.
Unit 11: Sports
In this unit, children learn about many of the sports they see in their lives, find out about a variety of sports equipment, talk about the roles of teams, cheerleaders, and fans in sports, think about and create uniforms, and begin to understand the basics of good sportsmanship.
Unit 12: Music
This unit provides children with knowledge about the different ways in which people create music — vocally or with instruments — and the various types of music people create and enjoy are covered.
Unit 13: Community Helpers
This unit provides children with basic information about a few of many communities helpers in their lives. Children learn why each community helper is important and that we sometimes require help from people other than our parents.
Unit 14: Exploring Our Sense of Hearing
In this unit, children will explore how we recognize different sounds in our environment, at home and school and outdoors, through books and songs, discussion, sorting games, simple experiments, mathematical charting, and music and movement.
Unit 15: Beautiful Colors
In this unit, color experiences give children new words to describe differences and similarities in the world around them, encourage experimentation, and give information about nature, animals, and the foods they eat.
Unit 16: Let's Grow — Plants!
In this unit, children will learn about plants, including basic plant anatomy, seeds, and the life cycle of a plant.
Unit 17: Transportation
This unit allows children to think about a regular and fascinating part of their lives — transportation. Their vocabularies will expand as they learn about the types of transportation people use on the ground, in water, and in the air.
Unit 18: Discover the Farm
This unit provides children with knowledge and information about nature, and people's roles in the production of food.