Planning with little ones?!

[PinkFairy24]

Can you please help me?

I am quite new and am trying to write down some planning, more to make me feel like I am doing something.

My mindee has just turned 2 and my daughter is 19 months. I don't think that I can really write plans for this age as they just don't understand, especially as my mindee has English as a second language and doesn't use much of it.

They spend a lot of time doing free play activities, such as painting, sand or water play and playing with construction or building toys. At this age should I just be basing the time they have with me on play?

I was thinking as I only have the one mindee could I just write up ILP's instead. as these would be planned just around her? Can you also write up free play activities as an ILP? As in with them playing with sand or water, I need to make sure that the equipment outside is clean, fill the water trays with clean, fresh water and check the sand pit. I can adapt this play to include plastic toys to mould or float after observing that she likes dinosaurs? So even though this is child initiated play, obviously water play needs constant supervision.

Thanks for reading, Xxx

[sarah707]

At age 2 you are looking to follow the child's interests so yes, you should be planning from what you see and what is happening on the day.

if the child has been on an outing you could plan some extension activities around that... if the child has brought a toy from home you can plan some activities around that.

So the best thing to do is to note observations of interests, learning styles, likes, dislikes etc and then plan activities you know the child will enjoy.

Hth :D

[littleraspberry]

My main two mindees are aged two (just!) and 17 months, and my DS is 18 months. For them I write a plan based around their interests, covering each of the six areas. Its kind of like a spider diagram, and mostly suggests the kind of free play activities you are talking about. For example, the 17 month old is obsessed with cars (to the point that he hardly plays with anything else) so his plan has things like using the cars and car mat, the garage with the ramp, plastic cars in paint/gloop/sand/water, reading books with cars, singing and dancing to car-related music, etc...
Saying that, I don't plan out the day particularly. (I used to, but found I never followed it as they always wanted to do something different!). I have their individual plans stuck on the wall in case I need inspiration, and then just go with the flow. If we do an activity on my plan I highlight it and date it, and of course make sure I've got a few photos!
I don't really do any themed planning for them as they don't really understand the links. But we do seasonal things such as collecting natural objects, leaf printing, etc. Again, I do a monthly spider diagram with ideas on and stick it to the wall, but its for inspiration if things get slow rather than as a definite plan.

[rosebud]

I like Little Raspberry's planning. I don't write my plans down (because I found it too time consuming and never stuck to them) but if I did I would use her spidergram format as it seems very flexible and is based on individual interests.You could add bits to it as new interests arise or as the child develops. I might even try this.

[PinkFairy24]

Ohhh i love this planning as well!! Brilliant, thank you!!

I have noticed that my 2 year old mindee loves dinosaurs, so I have worked on this. We played with plastic dinosaurs in jelly yesterday, though she didn't really like to get her hands messy :o( I then decided to get the washing up bowl out and we washed the dinosaurs clean instead after my daughter played in the jelly, she really loved this! Hehe, I turned my back though for a minute and I my mindee suddenly start playing in the jelly!! Maybe she understood that they can get messy, but it all washes off so it is ok :o) We then went out into the garden and hid the dinosaurs in the leaves and made a home for them. It was good as we practised her English with words relating to the leaves and how they felt all 'dry' and 'crispy' as well as some words about sleeping as we put the dinosaurs to bed.

Today I had her for longer hours, so after a toddler group where she got to do a lot of free play with the toys there, we coloured in some pictures of dinosaurs and made a dinosaur out of play doh. She is not very good with wanting to open a book, but I think this is because it isn't in her home language. Maybe I should look for a bright colourful book on dinosaurs as well so she will be interested in the pictures?

Am not sure what else I can do with this dinosaur plan, apart from making some biscuits? She gets very active in making noises and hand movements so I think she is enjoying our dinosaur games. I think that Peppa pig helps as well with the little George and his love of dinosaurs! My daughter is obsessed with Peppa!!

Thanks for your help and for the ideas Xxx