There are seven Basic Preschool Concepts, or process skills, that preschoolers learn during the early years. Some of these concepts are higher level concepts that they may (or may not) master before kindergarten.
Knowing which process skills each of your students understand will help you to plan activities to support their current skills as well as to challenge them to use the next skill!
The Basic Preschool Concepts are:
- Observing
- Comparing
- Classifying
- Measuring
- Communicating
- Inferring
- Predicting
In Mathematics, the skills of classifying, comparing and measuring are referred to as Math Concepts. Let’s look more closely at each of these Basic Preschool Concepts one by one.
1. Observing: Using the senses
Observing is the first step in gathering and organizing information. Children use their senses to observe. When given a collection of items (for example apples) children use their senses to observe attributes such as color, size, sweet/sour, texture, and soft/crunchy.
2. Comparing: Looking at similarities and differences
Once children have had time to explore items, they begin to compare. They begin to notice similarities as well as differences such as same and different colors, weights and sizes of apples.
3. Classifying: Grouping and sorting
Classifying is a higher level of comparing. After observing and comparing, the children can take the information learned and begin sorting and grouping. They begin to separate items based on observations. They may separate apples by those with and without stems, by size, by color, etc.
4. Measuring: Working with or describing quantities
The next skill is measuring. Children can measure in many ways as they spend more time with items. With our apple example, the children may determine which apple is larger or smaller by using a tape measure or ruler rather than determining this based on comparing each apple to each other. They may begin measuring weight by using a balance scale rather than estimating based on holding each apple.
5. Communicating: Describing ideas (in journals, with pictures, writing, graphs, etc.)
Communicating is a common process skill that many preschool children develop. This can be done in many ways: talking about their observations, keeping a picture journal, drawing pictures of their findings with the teacher writing down their thoughts.
6. Inferring: Using gathered and organized information
This is where children use information they have or know from one experience and base their expected outcome of new experiences on patterns from previous experiences
Inferring is when children make sense or meaning out of the previous process skills. For example, your students have been helping to take care of a plant by watering it every other day. Your classroom is closed for a week. When you return, the plant is wilting. Your students notice that it is dry. You ask the children why they think the plant now looks the way it does. They may recall that plants need soil, water and sun. They may suggest the plant needs water.
7. Predicting: Making reasonable guesses or estimations based on observations and prior knowledge and experiences.
Predicting is when the child states what they expect will happen. For young children, this may at first be a guess based on two choices (will the apple sink or float).
Activities that support the Basic Preschool Concepts provide opportunities for children to use “failure” to learn. Only by failing can they learn what works and what does not work to solve a problem.
You can help preschoolers develop a positive attitude toward failure by providing activities that challenge them (but not so many that they are frustrated).
For example, a child will be frustrated “predicting” what will sink and float if they have not had time or experience using different objects at the water table to observe or classify in an informal way.
Provide many activities that support their current knowledge skills and introduce higher level process skills over time.