Overview
I have chosen the theme of “our neighborhood” for this three year old preschool class. This theme will allow the class to explore ideas of living in a society. The roles people play in that society, ways to get around, the different buildings and their purposes, the different cultures and languages spoken, and the other living things that we share our neighborhood with will all be explored. These different activities will allow the students to work in different settings, in whole group, small groups, and individually, and will also allow for much movement and hands on learning within the activities.
Choosing the neighborhood that the students live in will allow the students to more easily make connections between the themes and themselves The neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens that I have chosen has many themes to explore, from a large South Asian and Hispanic population, many community centers including libraries, churches, temples, playgrounds, and typical places that you would find in most neighborhoods, like firehouses, the post office, and restaurants. The students in the class will be asked to share their own cultures and language in this theme, and will have the opportunity to learn about the other parts of the neighborhood that they might not be familiar with.
All students in this class participating in this thematic unit have some type of delay in communication, and some are English language learners. Because of this, all lessons have some expressive or receptive language skills to work on in them. The unit will bring these language skills into all of the other domain areas to form a cohesive unit where the students will be exposed to language through many different activities.
In the other week of this theme, the students will visit the library and the post office, compare how tall the different buildings are, using “tall, taller, and tallest” and other descriptive, look for shapes in the buildings, study the animals in our neighborhood, and read City Green by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan which explores the theme of a vegetable garden in a city.