Are themes obligatory?

[jadavi]

I'm all for doing an activity with an autumn theme but don't want to box myself in with being obliged to continue it. I much prefer to put my energy to offering just the right activity for the child's aptitude. . Themes always end up feeling like yesterdays dinner after a while. . 'o no. . Not autumn again. . ' haha
do we HAVE to do them?

Ja

[cs01]

Not at all. We should be providing activities for the children to do, based on their current interests. You could then have a theme around their interests if you wanted to but its not compulsory.

[nikki thomson]

Hi, I don't do themes never have, don't do any written planning of any description either, it's not my thing but then I don't have loads of mindee's, maybe if you do it's easier to keep track.

Nikki. X

[Pixie dust]

I don't follow themes my planning which is very basic follows childrens interests and is normally written up at the end of the week.

[rosebud]

I only tend to use themes to support what 3-4 year olds are already learning at nursery / school, so I just find out what their themes will be and have resources ready to support this. For example in the summer term the nursery were learning about holidays, one of the 4 year olds came home and said "I'm learning about holidays at school so you need to make me a travel agents and an airport". Next day we visited the travel agents for brochures and got suitcases out and went from there, we turned the playhouse into a travel agents for a few weeks. No written planning required and the children's interests were followed until they'd bored of the theme.

I do tend to do a lot of seasonal based activities but I don't have a specific plan to do so, it just tends to be what interests us at the time.

[sarah707]

Themes are not statutory or required.

However if you think they will help you focus on group planning for the 3 years plus age group then they can be very useful.

Hth