If you guys have read my post regarding the right age for preschool, then you must be aware that a Playgroup student is 3 years of age. Now this may sound too early to put you kid through a lot but trust me kids of this age group have so much learning capacity that we hardly understand.
We are going to breakdown the syllabus of playgroup for English in two halves. Usually when it comes to schooling, most of the schools offer two semesters or two terms known as Midterm and Final term. That means the whole syllabus for playgroup class is divided in six months for each term.
Let us begin this blog post and go through the syllabus that you child should be learning and consuming for each term and how much they must have learnt by the end of the playgroup year.
Table of Contents
Midterm Syllabus For Playgroup
When it comes to the subject of English and a three-year-old, the major role for a teacher or a parent (if child is being home schooled) is mostly related to help them with recognition of letters along with helping them to learn phonetics (sounds) of alphabets which later on help the children to spell and read the words in their later years.
The syllabus for midterm will be divided in to three portions including reading, writing and oral learning. The whole syllabus will be very easy for you to understand and help your little one to grasp it without facing any difficulties.
Reading Syllabus For English (Midterm)
When it comes to reading, your major goal will be to start with two letters per week. You can go for the recognition of one letter for three days and then the next letter for next three days. During these days, you will help your child to first learn and look at the letter and learn its sound.
You might need to repeat the sound again and again, not for just the three days assigned to learning a single letter but maybe for the next three months as well. Children of this age need some time to grasp the new concepts and learning new things especially when they are academic.
For the first six months of playgroup, you will need to help and push your child to learn the letters from “Aa” to “Mm”. Now he/she must know the sounds of these letters, they should be able to recognize these letters and not just that they must be able to read different pictures related to the letter or beginning with the sound of the letter they are reading or learning.
There are many books out there in the market for playgroup, but if you want to invest in professional curriculum books, then our advice for you will be to go for the syllabus from Oxford University Press. I love almost all of their books and I personally use their books with my school students and kids at my home as well. I love the book First Steps To Early Years (Level 1) for my playgroup students.
This book does not only contain letters with various pictures beginning with the letters’ sounds, but it also has poems and activities related to every singe letter. All the kids love this book too and it has really been an easy transformational book for even those kids who joined the school and had no knowledge about alphabets. They easily understood them and started to read and write for the book activities with big smiles on their face.
Writing Syllabus For English
(Midterm)
Playgroup students usually includes kids who have never been into educational or learning activities at home. Hence some kids need at least two or three weeks just to learn how to grip and hold a pencil.
Usually when the kid is learning the grip, it is advisable for teachers and parents to get them involved in coloring activities a lot. They might not learn to color neatly all of a sudden. But whilst coloring they just learn how to grip and hold pencil and then it is very easy to switch them to actual writing of alphabets.
Once your kid has developed a strong hold or good grip of the pencil, you can shift them to write alphabets on dotted lines. There are too many writing workbooks and books for the playgroup class of preschool and you can actually pick up anyone that suits your kid.
Initially start with workbooks or books which have relatively big letters to trace. This way your kid will not find it difficult to trace and with time when they will trace over bigger alphabets and know where to begin and where to end, you can switch them to trace smaller sized alphabets.
Soon Gemini Home School will launch its own tracing workbooks and worksheets for playgroup that will be really easy to follow and easy to help your kids learn how to write alphabets.
During the first six months only go for the letters “Aa” to “Mm” because that is what your child will be learning with sounds and reading along with images that begin with the letter sounds in their oral and reading syllabus.
Oral Syllabus For English
(Midterm)
When it comes to oral learning, this is where you will need a lot of activities to get the focus and attention of playgroup students. You will need to read different poems hat either begin with the letter they are learning or that have many words in them which begins with the sounds of the letters.
You will also need to sing the ABC song with them on a daily basis by using the letters sounds and few words starting with each letter. Trust me on this when I tell you that the recognition of the letters is not possible alone with just tracing the letters or reading them from an academic book.
You will need to implement some playing activities like using sand to trace a letter, watching various poems online for each letter and singing the whole ABC song so that even they will be learning half letters, they would still have remembered the next half letters that they will be writing and recognizing in their next semester.
Final Term Syllabus For Playgroup
Just like midterm, the English playgroup syllabus for final term will be divided in to three portions as well including reading, writing and oral learning.
Reading Syllabus For English
(Final term)
The strategy for the final term syllabus will be similar to the midterm reading strategy, you will just help them to learn the alphabets “Nn” to “Zz”. During this time, make sure to keep revising the alphabets that they learnt in their midterm syllabus on a daily basis, so that they do not forget their old lessons whilst learning the new ones.
Kids in playgroup class tend to forget very often and hence they need your help to revise their concepts with them again and again without showing any frustrations. Because some kids are naturally good at grasping the concepts but some children are slow learner, and we will be needing to give them the time to learn without getting irritated or giving up on them.
Writing Syllabus For English (Final term)
Now that you will be through the first six months, your child will already be habitual of tracing well with little to no assistance from you. You can make writing more fun for them at this stage by first helping them to write the alphabets on sand and then after the few minutes of play, you can always ask them to finish their writing task by themselves.
They are always greedy to get stars on their work. Nothing motivates my students more than getting a star drawn over their classwork and homework and their faces as well.
Oral Syllabus For English (Final term)
Oral will not be different than the previous semester as well. Watch a lot of poems for each letter, trace the letters by hand using crayons, using a tub filled with sand and reading poems with the letter you are learning.
In the final semester, always begin your English lecture by singing the alphabets song with its sounds and then make your students sing it all one by one. They will remember the song and the sounds by heart when the activity will be done repeatedly and would love to sing it aloud when given individual turns and they know they will be getting claps for doing it well.
End Note
Apart from the workbooks and books, you can use different worksheets on some days skipping the workbooks and book work to make the child more engaged with learning. Try to print out various worksheets for the two letters your child will be learning in one week.