Dear Preschool Teachers: They Already Know It’s Raining

Before there were weather charts, calendar songs, Letter of the Week and teachers asking a group of three-year-old's, “What day comes after Tuesday?” there was Friedrich Frobel.

Friedrich Frobel, the German educator who founded kindergarten in the 1800s, had a very different vision for how young children should learn. He believed in play, movement, music, creativity, nature and relationships. In Frobel's kindergartens, teachers and children actually gathered in circles to sing, tell stories, play movement games and participate together. These gatherings helped children become part of a classroom community and are part of the history behind the circle time we still use today.

I've been teaching young children for years, and I love circle time. But I have completely changed the way I use it. There is no daily calendar routine in my classroom. There is no weather chart, and I don't spend circle time taking attendance. Two things in particular have become my biggest preschool classroom pet peeves: the traditional calendar routine and Letter of the Week.

Let's start with the calendar

Young children are developing their understanding of time, and ideas like yesterday, tomorrow, next week and next month become more meaningful gradually through children's experiences. My issue isn't that preschoolers should never see or talk about a calendar. It's that I'm not convinced spending valuable circle time drilling the date every morning is the most meaningful way for my students to learn about time.

Anyone who has ever told a preschooler that their birthday is “next month” knows where this can go. There is a very good chance they will come in tomorrow and ask if today is their birthday. Yet we can spend a chunk of circle time asking children to repeat the month, date and day of the week. Sometimes I wonder if we're doing it because it's . meaningful for the children or because that's simply what we think circle time is supposed to look like.

If you ever find a calendar in my classroom, there's a good chance it's because the children are playing with it. And honestly, I would rather see that. Maybe they're pretending to schedule a birthday party or a doctor's appointment. Now the calendar has a purpose. They're encountering it through play and beginning to connect it to something that happens in real life. Then we have my second pet peeve: Letter of the Week.

Letter of the week

Monday morning arrives and suddenly the entire classroom belongs to B. We trace B. We color B. We find B. We bring in something beginning with B. By Friday, B has apparently completed its residency, and Monday morning C moves in. It's organized. It's easy to plan. It makes for a cute bulletin board. But what exactly are we trying to accomplish?

I want to be clear about something: I absolutely believe preschoolers should be intentionally taught letters and sounds. Research supports explicit alphabet instruction in early childhood. My issue isn't teaching letters. My issue is assuming that Letter of the Week, by itself, is the best way to do it.

I don't want a child to recognize B only because this happens to be B week. I want that child to recognize B in a friend's name, find it in a favorite book, notice it on a sign and connect it with its sound. I want children seeing and revisiting letters in meaningful contexts instead of treating each letter like it gets seven days of fame before we move on. Letters don't appear one week at a time in children's lives. Why should they in the classroom?

None of this means my circle time lacks intention. Actually, I think I've become more intentional about those minutes because I've stopped worrying about what circle time is “supposed” to look like. We might play a game involving three-step directions: touch your head, jump twice and find something blue. It looks like a game because it is a game. But think about everything a child is practicing. They have to listen, process language, remember several pieces of information, follow them in sequence and coordinate their body.

We work on language acquisition through conversations, songs, stories and games. We dance. We move. We work on gross-motor skills. We practice listening and taking turns. Sometimes I lead the conversation, and sometimes the children take it somewhere completely different. And yes, sometimes it gets loud. They're preschoolers. I would actually be a little concerned if it didn't.

What if we brought back Frobel?

One pedagogy I am intentionally bringing more into my classroom is Frobel's approach to early learning. More than 150 years later, I find myself drawn to how simple some of his ideas were. Children learn by doing. Play matters. Movement matters. Relationships matter. Children need opportunities to create, explore, build, sing, interact and make discoveries for themselves.

That doesn't mean teachers simply stand back and let anything happen. Frobel's philosophy included the idea of adults guiding and enriching children's experiences. And that is the part I think sometimes gets lost when we talk about play-based learning. Play-based doesn't mean purposeless.

I can work on listening and memory through a movement game. I can build vocabulary through conversation. I can introduce literacy through children's names, books and environmental print. I can encourage problem-solving by giving children something to figure out together. I can use music to work on language, rhythm and movement. The learning is there. It just doesn't always look like traditional instruction.

Current guidance on developmentally appropriate practice supports that balance. Young children need intentional teachers, but they also need play, movement, active participation and learning experiences that make sense for their development. Even large-group activities such as circle time should be responsive to children's attention and needs rather than continuing simply because the lesson plan says circle time lasts 25 minutes. And maybe that's the bigger conversation we need to have in early childhood education. Sometimes I think we confuse looking academic with actually learning.

A giant calendar looks educational. Twenty-six Letter of the Week crafts look educational. A group of preschoolers sitting perfectly still while a teacher points to a chart certainly looks educational. But looking like school to an adult doesn't automatically make something meaningful to a four-year-old. I'm not suggesting we eliminate circle time. Quite the opposite. I want us to take circle time back.

Let children talk. Let them move. Let them sing. Give them directions that make their brains work. Read books that start conversations. Introduce interesting words. Play games. Let them laugh. And occasionally throw out the activity you planned because a four-year-old asked a question that turned out to be far more interesting.

In many ways, that's much closer to the spirit of the circle Frobel envisioned in the first place A nd please, we can probably retire the daily weather report. If it's raining outside, I'm not going to ask 15 children to look out the window and tell me what the weather is. They walked through the rain too.

They know.

Bibliography

Frobel Trust. “About Friedrich Frobel.” Frobel Trust. Overview of Frobel’s educational philosophy, including play, creativity, relationships, nature, and learning through activity.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). “Our Proud Heritage: The Legacies of Pioneers in Early Childhood Education.” Young Children. Discussion of the history of kindergarten and Frobelian practices, including circle gatherings, songs, storytelling, music, and movement.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). “Developmentally Appropriate Practice: A Position Statement.” NAEYC. Guidance emphasizing play, active engagement, intentional teaching, and developmentally appropriate learning experiences.

National Early Literacy Panel. Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. National Institute for Literacy, 2008. Review of research on early literacy development, including alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and early predictors of later literacy achievement.

Piasta, Shayne B., and Richard K. Wagner. “Developing Early Literacy Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Alphabet Learning and Instruction.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 1, 2010, pp. 8–38.