planning help again please ......

[VeggieSausage]

Right I am nearly getting to grips with planning!!! :laughing:

1. Long term planning. I have a general planning folder divided into months with a monthly calendar printed off in each month with important dates, festivals we are celebrating, children's birthday etc.

2. Medium term planning. I put in activity ideas etc in my planning folder in each month where they are relevant to what we might do.

3. this is where I fall down......

Am a bit confused as to what next

1. an individual play plan for each child - I thought a weekly for full time children and a monthly for very part time children. Do we fill this in the month before or fill it in as we go through the month/week? I have seen a play plan sheet that Sarah707 designed which looks good and on it, it has a section with all areas of learning. Am I going to fill in activites for each of these areas or how the planned activities link to EYFS eg PD fine motor skills practising using scissors? There is a section for planned activities as well....

Now I have under 3s and an over 3 in my pre-schoolers. I want to do a theme of ELmer the elephant this month. Do I include the under 3s in the themed acitivities but not mark it on their planning sheet, or do I plan fully on their interests. For eg I have one child who is only interested in cars - how does this fit with my elmer theme?

YOU SEE TOTAL CONFUSION :laughing::panic::laughing::panic: have gone mad with thinking about it all x

[sarah707]

There are 2 main areas of learning and play you might note on a play plan -

1. What the child has enjoyed doing - playing with cars; joining in songs about cars; painting with car wheels; watching 'The Wiggles - big red car' on You Tube; pretending to drive around the garden;

2. What you have planned - the theme is Elmer and the children are exploring colours. X has been looking at the colours of his car collection. He has also shown an interest in our colour display.

Obs - X knows the colours red and yellow! He has mixed them to make a mess... :p

Next week X might enjoy... colour mixing using truck wheels.

You are writing your long and medium term planning in advance... most of your play planning can be done as the child is exploring and playing and learning because it is immediate and individual to the child.

You are saying elsewhere what you have planned and you will be sharing that with parents. For X you are saying on his play plan what he personally has got out of the experience.

There is little point in saying you have planned this and that - he hasn't engaged with this and that - and you are writing it somewhere else anyway - I don't know about you but I am too busy to duplicate!!

Does that make sense? :D

[VeggieSausage]

can i just go over again - sorry Sarah

1. long term - calendar of events etc
2. Medium term - ideas for that month/ spidergram of themes
3. Short term group planning - activities/outings planned for the day/week
4. Play plan - is this ok for all my individual planning? I make a note of next steps that go in LJ every 6 weeks or so and this goes home for parents to see and they know what our theme will be for the next month from newsletters etc. I am planning to put the play plan in the LJ folder.

The planned activities I do - I want to do these around the theme of Elmer - how do you take into account the interest in cars and each child's interest and their next steps - or is it that I do planned Elmer activities for everyone to enjoy etc and get what they get out of it, all will be different, and work on individual skills - but still plan play, resources etc to child's interests separately - I think I have just answered my own question!!! sorry I am confusing myself by over thinking I think.

On the play plan sheet - I have adapted the one you did on childcare.co.uk planning play info sheet. There is the planned activities section so I will put in here what the child got out of the activity/interested in etc, in the areas of development - what am I putting in there? am all confused - development matter covered? observation? age category? sorry am most confuzzled!

sorry for rambling :eek:

[sarah707]

I've filled in your play plan for you in my previous post for the child with the car obsession...

I think you are over thinking it! The rest looks absolutely fine to me :D