Getting ready to learn

One of the things that we teach at Rainbow Steps is the beginning of how to describe and compare measurable attributes. This student is comparing the size of various objects in order to describe one as bigger or smaller than the other.

School-raised Monarch butterflies leave for their migration to Mexico while we have fun learning a lot about nature's creatures, geography, biology, metamorphosis, and more.

Activities involving role play encourage creative thinking and allow children to learn while following the rules of the role. It helps students internally control their own behavior.

We often help children describe familiar people, places, things, and events so that they learn about providing conversational detail.

With role playing, students learn to negotiate and transfer knowledge to each other. It also teaches important facets of life like delayed gratification, balancing ones ideas with others, and synthesizing information and ideas.

In preschool, students begin learning simple measurements like “big or little” and “long and short.” The basics of classification are important throughout life through measuring size, weight, time, and volume.

We make our own fire fighter hats with Dalmatian ears before a real fire fighter comes to visit at Rainbow Steps. Making a costume of a fire fighter, then seeing a real one right in one's classroom, makes a direct link for students.

Students learn how to ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something. We encourage understanding and using question words (interrogatives). Children are encouraged to produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.

We sit in a circle nearly every day so that we can have collaborative conversations with diverse partners. We are beginning to learn to speak and listen to peers and adults in small and larger groups.

Peer-to-peer activities are encouraged so that children learn to add details to stories that strengthen their later writings.

Rainbow Steps' students are in the very beginnings of learning to reason and think conceptually. Scissoring also builds fine motor skills and teaches the basics of attending to precision.

We encourage play with objects that helps students model their environment and to construct more and more complex shapes.

Modeling in clay allows students to begin to work with three-dimensional shapes like cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres.

Many manipulative items at Rainbow Steps help teach things like numbering, relative sizes, order and sequencing, and more concepts that build a child’s mental and physical skills.

Children are encouraged to speak audibly and express their thoughts, feelings and ideas clearly.

While preschoolers aren't yet physically able to produce written materials, we strive to make them ready to do so as they advance.

We learn about our physical world in terms of geometric ideas, so we teach about dimensional shapes like squares, rectangles, and hexagons in a variety of ways.

If text is read aloud by the teacher, students learn about the media, they ask questions about key details, and they learn to ask questions if something is not understood.

Part of our work at school is getting students to ask and answer questions about key details in a story or song. It's important for teaching comprehension.

We teach students that conversations have multiple exchanges. Students learn to read social cues, to regulate emotions, to negotiate, and to take turns.

Students engage in dress-up play which allows them to be someone else. Using props for a role excites imagination and develops positive ideas about work, and about the world around us.

We hang things on our walls that are student-produced using a combination of drawing and dictating to encourage students to compose. Drawing encourages the future ability to produce writing that is understood by others, and that can be explained by the author.

Puzzles are multi-purpose at Rainbow Steps: They build students' manipulation skills; they demand students use their cognitive skills; and they show that the reward at completion provides a positive ending to a task.

Acting out meal preparation is one of the ways that Rainbow Steps students learn to collaborate, problem solve, and think flexibly. Interacting with others is critical to life’s success and happiness.

Art time is always fun, and it develops fine motor skills. Arts and crafts also stimulate preschoolers’ imaginations and creativity helping with mental development.