Visual-practical methods of teaching preschoolers: description, features and recommendations

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Human thinking is based on the creation of ideal images of reality that we reproduce in the mind. These images are formed under the influence of life experience. In order for a child to understand such abstract concepts as size, color, number, size, etc., he must see real objects, hold them in his hands, and perform various operations with them. Of particular importance is the visual-practical method in teaching preschoolers, since they have not yet formed logical thinking.

Age features

From 3 to 7 years, the development of the child is very intensive. Toddlers are naturally curious and want to explore the world around them. They ask a lot of questions, try to join the world of adults through role-playing games, imitation. The central neoplasm of the preschool periodbecomes imagination, that is, the ability to create images in the mind.

However, it needs external support. Toddlers need to visually see a phenomenon or object in order to imagine it later. Comparison, generalization, classification are possible only if the child operates with real toys, didactic materials. When choosing methods and techniques for teaching preschool children, these features must be taken into account.

Using visibility

Cognitive activity in children can be formed from the first year of life. The main methods and techniques of teaching preschoolers are divided into three groups: verbal, practical and visual. The peculiarity of the latter is that they are not independent, but are always used in combination with other methods. Nevertheless, their significance is quite large, because preschoolers need sensory-visual perception of the objects being studied.

The group of visual methods traditionally includes:

• Observation when children focus on some phenomenon or object (rainbow, bullfinches on a tree, the work of a janitor, etc.), highlight its essential features, changes occurring to it.
• Viewing pictures, posters, diagrams, layouts, with the help of which static visual images are formed in the child's imagination.
• Demonstration of cartoons, films, performances, slides that help broaden horizons and create dynamic visual images.

Practical teaching methods and techniquespreschoolers

When looking at pictures with kids or watching fish in an aquarium, an adult resorts to verbal explanation, conversation. However, it is easier for a child to remember and realize those processes in which he was directly involved. It's one thing if the boy in the movie compared the length of the paper strips using the overlay method. Another thing is when a preschooler reproduces this action himself.

Practical methods aimed at the real transformation of objects and didactic materials by children are very important at this age. These include:

• Exercise when the child repeatedly repeats the learned actions.
• Experiments and experiments involving the creation of special conditions in order to reveal the hidden qualities of objects or the connections between them.
• Modeling, during which a generalized image of an object or phenomenon is created (a plan of a room, a house made of cubes, a sound scheme of a word).
• Game method, when children join in an imaginary situation, compete with each other or imitate others, while having fun and learning.

Connection of practical and visual methods

Sensory experience is an important condition for the successful development of the child. Before a person develops the ability to solve examples in his mind, he resorts to the help of his own fingers many times. This feature of children was taken into account by teachers when developing their didactic materials (for example, M. Montessori, the Nikitina spouses, B. Zaitsev). Cubes with syllables, insert frames, velvet paper lettersserve as a means of visualization and at the same time they can be used for practical actions, used in games.

Information that the child not only saw, but also lived, is remembered involuntarily. Thus, visual and practical methods in teaching preschoolers play a decisive role and become the basis for the emergence of logical thinking. Repeated repetition of the same actions with real objects leads to the fact that the baby begins to reproduce them mentally, replacing the originals with models, diagrams.

Children with general speech underdevelopment

Practical methods are of particular importance in teaching preschoolers with OHP who have difficulty with verbal comprehension. Thinking and speech are closely related. The inability to express their thoughts and understand an adult leads to the fact that the child thinks slowly, cannot draw conclusions and compare objects, gets confused in terms, has problems understanding symbols.

It is necessary to work purposefully with such children, using non-verbal tasks. Experts recommend:

• to teach children to make an object from parts (mosaic, puzzles, appliqué);
• to form a generalization skill by identifying an extra picture, grouping various objects according to one or more features;
• to develop imagination by inviting children to turn a spot or a geometric figure into an understandable pattern;
• work on the formation of figurative thinking (recognize objects by contour, draw a room plan or a gamesites, build houses from the designer according to the scheme).

Didactic games

Children are easier to absorb information when it is presented in an entertaining way. Didactic games with objects (mosaic, liners, prefabricated toys) or printed materials (cards, lotto, cut pictures) have become a variety of the practical method of teaching preschoolers.

Children get acquainted with the properties of objects, learn to compare them, find differences or select a pair, group, classify. At the same time, they are passionate about the process, receive positive emotions. Performing play actions with cubes or geometric shapes, the child involuntarily concentrates on the task, acquires knowledge more firmly and does not feel pressure from outside.

Staging and dramatizations

Another practical method of teaching preschoolers is imitation. Children tend to imitate adults, copy the actions of animals, fairy-tale characters. Playing a role, engaging in an imaginary situation, they learn the world, the relationship between people. Speech is actively developing.

It is very useful to put on performances based on fairy tales read, to go on imaginary journeys through countries and oceans, to turn into representatives of various professions. Preschoolers are happy to "live" interesting material for themselves, thus including it in their personal experience. It gives impetus to reflection, awakens the imagination, develops communication skills andcognitive interests.

Experimental activities

This hands-on method of teaching preschoolers involves exposure to an object in order to study it. The children like to make elementary experiments with water in all its states, clay, sand, plants, magnets, to observe the changes taking place before their eyes. At the same time, they learn to analyze what they see, draw conclusions, and engage in search activities.

Often the practical side of what is happening (special tools, unusual materials) makes kids more happy than the discovery made. Therefore, it is important to motivate preschoolers to learn new information before setting up an experiment. For this, fairy-tale characters can be introduced (a letter from the Snow Queen, who offers to study the magical properties of snow and ice). Children may also be interested in visual aids (books, bright posters, cards) or a preliminary discussion during which assumptions are made about the results of the experiment.

Simulation

It is not always possible to see or feel the studied object. In this case, its substitute (layout, diagram, symbolic image) is created, in which the studied properties or relationships are visually reproduced. Modeling as a practical method of teaching preschoolers was studied by Zhurova L. E. (for the sound analysis of words), Paramonova L. A. (during design), Terentyeva E. F. and Vetrova N. I. (for studying nature), Loginova V. I. and Krylova N. M. (for acquaintance withlabor of adults). The use of visual models facilitates the process of cognition, as they make the hidden properties of objects accessible to children's perception.

In order for a preschooler to work with symbolic analogies, he must have experience of substitution. It is formed during games, when kids feed the doll with sand or turn into brave captains, as well as in creative activities (drawing, modeling).

Younger preschoolers work with subject models that reproduce the design features of their counterpart (construction kits, models, technical toys). By the age of 5-6, children can already create object-schematic models in which objects and their properties are indicated by graphic symbols. A vivid example is a calendar of nature or a model of a word, where sounds are indicated by multi-colored circles.

Practical teaching methods for preschoolers form visual-figurative and visual-schematic thinking. Thanks to them, kids not only get to know the world, but also begin to think logically, plan their actions in advance, anticipate their results and abstract from the insignificant features of the object.