Planning

[cs01]

I am rubbish at planning activities. I do not have a creative bone in my body so the thought of sitting down and planing activities/themes/crafts sends me running for the hills! I am due to have a visit from ofsted any day now and I have no planning paperwork other than a one page week planner which shows what times/days I do school runs, toddler groups etc.

What do you all do? For example, let's say the theme is weather, what would you do and over what length of time would you base the theme, 1 week? Do you plan for 1 week at a time with different themes or do you plan longer term?

The children I care for are 12m & 20m. I am finding it difficult to find activities suitable for their age when all they want to do is play. They are too young to do most crafts and I end up doing them for them.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

[Allie]

I have a rough plan for the term, my long term plan, then another list of possible activities thats my medium term plan, then the actual activities follow the childrens interests thats my short term plan (lots of my ideas for medium plan aren't used) but thats EYFS following their interests.

some other threads have loads of ideas for planning in all areas so it might be worth having a look



Allie

[huggableshelly]

general painting sponge painting finger painting

find pics on the net for them to paint on

let them free paint

its doesnt have to be fantastic mine never is, if the children do not show an interest in other craft then dont do it yet, wait until they are older ... gluing and sticking takes more practice.

[Mrs M]

You don't have to do themes. I started off having themed weeks/months but have knocked that on the head really. We concentrate on certain things throughout the month if the children are interested but I'm not strict in my planning. They're very young for themes, so just let them play. Observe them and ensure you have the resources available to them that they enjoy to play with. Take them to toddler groups and children's centres as arts and crafts are sometimes undertaken there. I do painting with the one year old I mind and we use such things as sponges and potatoes and she free paints. She loves it. Haven't started gluing yet though! With regards to planning, I do a monthly plan which just shows loosely what I'd like to cover so this month I've included RSPCA week, numbers, Easter and a couple of birthday celebrations. For the individual weeks I just do an AM and PM and just write what children I have and where we're going or what activities we plan to do. It always changes so I'll always write why it changed and how. For the children's individual planning, I take this from my next steps in my observations. Hope this helps you.

[singlewiththree]

Mine are all young too so I just do

Long Term planning: list of multicultural events and local events that I might want to cover

Individual short term planning: I list the child names/ages and then what I am going to get out for their arrival and any particular craft/toy I'm doing most are from observations. C loves tractors so Weds i got out the tractors and paint and we did tractor tracks in the paint. P prefers to use a brush so she had one of those.

My "theme" at the moment is the season and what it bring so we are summer at the moment so just anything to do with summer, such as weather, sports, animals etc and just follow the season and the calendar.

[sarah707]

You are meeting lots of the Eyfs just by following the childrne's individual routines.

Write up a routine sheet -

xxx arrival time

xxx breakfast

xxx free play

xxx toddler group

xxx lunchtime

For the free play sessions, write up a list of the main resources you make available, so morning free play might be duplo because a child is wanting to make towers and the farmyard animals because a child went to the farm at the weekend.

Writing it up like this is showing you are following children's interests and taking account of what they have done at home.

Watch what the children are doing and you can spot when they do new things ... these are your observations from which you will do your next lot of planning - getting free play things organised next time they come to you.

Hope that helps