planning

[gemma659353]

How many planned activities do you aim for per day?

[sarah707]

We plan one activity morning and another afternoon - we don't do huge amounts of writing we just have an outline in our heads of what we are going to do.

Our daily routine is our planning as well - children make meals, sing, read books etc through the day

[Maza]

Usually one. It might be a baking activity or an art activity, number matching, planting etc. Sometimes we don't even get the one activity done(but we usually do).

I will have other things planned though like playgroup on Monday, library on Tuesday etc. I also have ongoing activities planned, for example I try to do a few minutes name writing with one of my mindees each day, and allow a few extra minutes for us to get ready to go out because a different mindee is learning how to put on his own shoes and is painfully slow.

I also have ongoing objectives in mind which is the most important thing really. So one little boys next step is to count accurately by rote to ten. I will cover that objective daily, when we walk downstairs (counting the stairs), counting the toy trains as he lines them up, singing counting rhymes as we walk to playgroup, seeing if the children can tidy up before I count to ten etc. So even if we don't get my planned activity done we still get some learning done. x

[gemma659353]

How long do your activities tend to last for? Whenever I seem to plan something it's over within 5/10 mins max

[sarah707]

How long do your activities tend to last for? Whenever I seem to plan something it's over within 5/10 mins max

The more we work with children and involve them in the activities, the longer they last!

We have 3 over 2s who are all well established. We talk to them about what we are doing and why - introduce new things bit by bit - ask them what they want to do - take account of their interests and wishes - get them helping to set things up and put them away - change things to accommodate their suggestions ...

They are all doing really well with concentration and will often suggest ways of extending their own learning based on things we have done with them previously - what the learning characteristics call 'making links in their learning'.

Keep plugging away, a little bit every day and it will come with time and maturity

[Maza]

Sometimes they will last that long with little ones and that is fine. Other times, you can evaluate your activity and think about why it didn't last longer. Did you plan something that was too challenging or not challenging enough? Sometimes I leave an activity out, (depending on what it is) and over the course of the day they will spend a couple of hours at it, but it might be in 10 minute bursts here and there.

As Sarah says, if you sit with them it might last longer. For example, if I put out paints and paper, I might notice that they are dabbing at the paper with their brush instead of using strokes and so I might quickly add other things that they could 'dab' with - cotton buds, old vegetables, duplo etc and the activity would last a bit longer that way. If the children get a good quality, totally engrossed 5-10 minutes then that is fine - quality not quantity - but if they were just 'going through the motions' then maybe what you had planned was for a slightly different age group.

Also, don't always think that activities have to be at a table. It might be in the water tray where you have added tweezers and small pebbles and tins - you wanted to see if the children can use the pincer movement with tweezers and then improve their hand/eye co-ordination by dropping them in the tin, or into little ice cube trays. x