What's your 3-year old preschooler doing?

[RomanGoddess]

Just wondering what other three year olds are doing in their preschools. Mine is:

- Doing a lot of "free" drawing (i.e., she draws whatever she wants, usually in marker). Sometimes she draws representational stuff (mom, dad, house, her, a penguin, whatever) sometimes she just scribbles.

- Learning to print her name in capital letters. She does the first two letters for the time being. She also identifies her own name now when it is written down on a list with other kids' names.

- Some learning of letters of the alphabet, on an individual basis, to the extent each child is interested.

- Learning about numbers, quantities and basic math concepts (i.e., teacher points to number "3" and says to her "I need this number of pencils. Can you go get them. Then DD goes to get three pencils. Then teachers says, "great. But now, I think I only need 2 pencils. What should I do. DD takes away one pencil so now there are only two.)

- Singing all kinds of songs together as a class

- painting, crafts, etc., of course

- gym class once a week for doing gross motor stuff (there is a playground that they run around in for 40 minutes every day as well)

[BCFD]

My DD was just recently enrolled into a half day Montessori school 2x week. I'll use your list as a comparison. She's doing about the same stuff that your 3 year old is doing.

She is:

-Free drawing, but mostly scribbles. She prefers markers, pens, and pencils over crayons these days. She can manage to draw a great circle and the letter 'S' (her names begins with an S). Constantly wants me to draw each member of the family for her and label them with their name. She has drawn a few things like a dog or fish and they have actually been pretty identifiable! Hehehe.. She also does pretty good about staying within the lines on coloring sheets.

-Has been able to identify her name when she sees it since she was about 2.5 and can tell me each letter in order and how to spell it. Just yesterday she used letter stickers and got all the letters but one letter out of place (she forgot the letter and then stuck it on the beginning of her name )

-Knows about more than half of the letter sounds. Before Montessori, I was teaching her the letter names so she knows them, but I have backed off and have just been identifying them as the sounds these days.

-Knows the difference between capital and lower case letters and can identify 90% of them (she still insists the letter J is a "candy cane" ). We play around on starfall.com a lot, so I think that has really helped.

-Is counting and also doing basic math concepts. When you show her the number 3, she'll always follow that up with "that's me" and the number 7 she'll say "that's my cousin" (yes, his real name is Seven )

-Great communication and language use, but no reading yet.

-She sings and dances a lot, but says she doesn't like to do either in school (she is very sensitive and shy)

-She's very cautious on the playground. Doesn't much like slides and still hasn't figured out how to swing herself on the swings.

[Tinkerszs]

Lots of hands on art projects.

Recognizing her name in print.

Learning to recognize letters.

Sign language

Spanish

Yoga

Lots of outside time.

Counting to 20 and counting objects to 10.

Singing lots of songs.

It is very developmental.

[schrocat]

DS turns 3 next month but he's in a multi-age class with 3-6 year olds. According to his teacher, he works in the practical life and sensorial sections alot. He works with the pink tower and likes working with pouring activities.

I think they're learning about different types of fishes in circle time right now. They learnt about different types of clouds and volcanoes last week.

There's also a spring garden that the kids help care for and there's a pet bird in the class.

[MCR]

My 3yo is.
Spelling out all the words she finds everywhere we go.
Turning all her playdough into babies to push around the deck in her baby stroller.
Peeling the paper off all the crayons.
Refusing to use the crayons to do any coloring or drawing, or name writing
Trying to fold all the drawing paper into paper airplanes and thowing them around the living room
She's a pistol and keeping me on my toes daily.