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Small Group Activities For Preschoolers – There are many reasons to send your child to preschool, but most likely at the top of your list includes promoting your child’s cognitive and social development. Small group activities are one of the most important ways preschool can help children develop.
In preschool, small group activities, rather than free play or whole-class engagement, are usually multiple learning stations in the classroom, featuring fun and engaging learning activities appropriate for five to six children. Some of the most notable benefits of small group activities in preschool include:
Small Group Activities For Preschoolers
Children are still very young in preschool and are still very much developing socially and cognitively. Most children function best in a small group setting because they are less overwhelmed by all the children and all the things they have to explore.
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Small group activities create a more accessible way for all children to interact with each other and the teacher. These activities provide an opportunity for preschoolers to use language skills to interact and complete a task with their peers.
By working in small groups, children work with their peers to achieve a common goal. Preschoolers will inevitably encounter obstacles working with each other. By overcoming these bumps with the help of the teacher, they will develop cooperation skills, conversation skills, learn how to work in a team and work on sharing and compromise.
Preschoolers sometimes find it difficult to make friends, but children are encouraged to play and interact with children they don’t normally interact with by working in small groups. This structured interaction creates a more inclusive environment in the preschool classroom and further promotes children’s social skills by encouraging them to work with different people.
Preschool teachers can more easily monitor children during small group activities. By working with each small group, teachers can observe a child’s development and behavior while working more closely with peers. This monitoring allows for better fine-tuning and tailoring of an individual’s preschool education to best support them in their unique needs.
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By strategically dividing preschoolers into groups, teachers can allow children to do an activity they are particularly interested in—trains and transportation, for example. Or children who are developmentally behind may be paired together and offered the most support. On the other hand, more advanced children can be together so that everyone gets the support they need.
Small group activities are essential to our preschool curriculum at Breakie Bunch because of the many benefits they offer.
By dividing our preschoolers into small groups, we can better monitor and encourage children to develop in many ways, most notably socially and cognitively. For more on your preschooler’s development, check out our blog series on preschool developmental milestones. First and foremost, decide what skills you will focus on. These should be skills that you have valued and want to master.
But you can have any skill you feel is necessary with your current group of students.
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It is extremely important that your small group time is engaging and fun. No one will want to join you for a “worksheet” at the table when they can play. #Sorry, not sorry
Trail games, bingo games, throw and color, or hide and seek are great games that can focus on specific skills. See the pictures below for examples:
MANIPULATORS: Kids love to touch things…and break things…and lick things…because…well, because they’re kids! So, incorporating touch and exploration manipulatives helps keep them interested (just make sure they keep their tongues behind them – ewww).
Some manipulative ideas include geoboards, play dough, sensory materials (such as rice, beans, sand), and fun “Feed Me” boxes. See the pictures below for examples:
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ACTIVITIES: Activities may not be as cool as games, but they sure can be fun. Also, people like to feel a sense of accomplishment when they complete a task, and activities are great for that.
I have made what I do in my small groups available to you. I have a small group pack for each of the 10 skills listed above. Each skill has 10 lessons within.
Never miss a blog post or freebie again! Get helpful preschool resources and ideas delivered straight to your inbox. Small groups are an important part of high-quality early childhood education. But what are small groups? How much should you have? And what should you teach in your small groups? These are all good questions when it comes to planning effective small group activities in your preschool, preschool, or kindergarten classroom.
Small groups are a highly effective teaching method that allows you to tailor your instruction to the needs and abilities of each student in your classroom.
Small Group Activities For Preschool
Small group activities allow you to easily differentiate learning for your students. The benefits of daily small group training are far greater than those of whole group training. When you incorporate small group activities into your daily schedule, you’ll be able to help your preschool, preschool, and kindergarten students learn more.
Scaffolding is another important aspect of small group learning. When you provide specific support to help a child progress to the next level of learning, this is usually called
Instruction. To successfully scaffold a child, a teacher must understand the learning continuum for each particular skill
Ideally, small groups can include three to six children per group. You can divide the students in your preschool classroom into several small groups, with three to six children per group.
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The number of groups you have will depend on how many children are in your classroom. For example, if you have a class of 20 Pre-K students, you might have four groups of five students each, or two groups of four and two groups of six. It is not how many groups you have that matters, but rather how you have determined which students are in each group.
Creating small groups is not a guessing game. A high-quality early childhood program uses assessment data to create small groups. Assessment is a tool that highly effective teachers use to help their students get from educational point A to point B. Teaching without following assessment data is like driving a bus full of young children blindfolded.
The most effective assessment tools will take the data you collect and create small groups for you to eliminate any implicit bias you may have. My favorite evaluation tool is ESGI –
First, you’ll want to designate a place in your classroom that is specifically for small group time so that your students know where to go when it’s their turn. I try to locate my small group area away from the noisiest parts of the classroom, such as blocks and drama games. You can use a table for your small groups or a carpet on the floor if you prefer.
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Next, you will need an area for your small group materials. You can prepare the materials for your small group each Friday for the following week so that they are ready to go when you come in on Monday morning. Color-coded containers or baskets, a different color for each day of the week, work well for storing materials for small groups. You can also use colorful plastic drawers to organize your small group items.
Small groups are most effective when you hold them daily. Find room in your daily schedule for small group study. You don’t have to meet with every group every day, just have a set time each day where you meet with at least one or two groups.
When it comes to managing small groups, there are a few important pitfalls that you should try to avoid.
Pitfall #1: While it may be tempting to split your class in half and do one small group by yourself and have another adult (assistant or co-teacher) lead the other, this is not consistent with the purpose of small groups. One of the goals of small groups is to help children learn to work independently.
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Pitfall #2: It’s easy to create groups based on behavior and character and keep them that way throughout the year, but this approach goes against best practices for small groups. Instead, your groups should be flexible and change when necessary based on where your students are on their own individual learning continuum. We know that all young children learn at their own pace, so it makes sense that not all children will travel the same learning path at the same time. That’s why we assess students more than once during the school year to see the progress they’ve made and determine what they’re ready for next.
Pitfall #3: The presence of small groups during central time. If you try to do small group classes during your center time, you’re going to have an uphill battle. The lure of the blocks and center for dramatic play will be too strong and your small groups will not be successful if they compete with the other centers. Instead, have more than one center time in your daily schedule if possible, one for small groups and individual work and one for full-fledged centers.
Small group time should match your children’s attention spans, especially at the beginning of the school year. You can start the year
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