About PreschoolFirst
PreschoolFirst is an inexpensive, online, resource which includes 2,000+ activities and a comprehensive assessment tool that teachers, parents or caregivers can use to observe play or individual behaviors of children from birth to 60 months.
All PreschoolFirst activities are age appropriate and play-based because play is the activity in which young children build most of their creative, social, reasoning, and motor skills. It is also the most natural setting in which to observe early childhood behaviors and development.
The PreschoolFirst observation tool tracks nearly 500 learning milestones—we call them behaviors—that each child accomplishes between birth and age five based on developmental guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Content Guidelines of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework.
• Teachers can use PreschoolFirst to observe children in the classroom with their current curriculum, or they can choose from hundreds of theme-based PreschoolFirst activities.
• Each hands-on activity is tailored to the behaviors encountered at a specific stage of development, and can be selected based either on recent observations of an individual child or the needs of the whole class.
• PreschoolFirst features an activity search function that lets teachers and caregivers easily find and choose the best activities for their children.
• There is also an individual online planning book for each teacher. Teachers enter their observations into the PreschoolFirst online database as they do their normal planning. They can then use this information to find activities appropriate for their children. PreschoolFirst is constantly adding new activities and themes, so your curriculum is always fresh and exciting. This makes PreschoolFirst a curriculum resource, a complete planning tool, and a sophisticated observation and record-keeping system.
PreschoolFirst is a service of NITV, Inc., a not-for-profit educational technologies company based in Reston, VA. NITV has been providing media-based educational solutions to schools and parents for over 25 years. NITV's other services include TeachersFirst.com for K-12 teachers and TeachersAndFamilies.com for parents of preschool and school age children.
