How much planning should I be doing for the ages I have?

[mmichellled]

Currently I have my own daughter (13m) and two children on different mornings each week (1-5). One is 14m and the other 3 (with some speech and language difficulties). The three year old I generally only take to nursery and collect except if I have on a Tuesday in which case I would have both. From October I will have a 9 month old baby (may or may not continue with the existing two- depends on days)

My question is how much planning should I be doing?

- 13/ 14 (and certainly 9) months - it is difficult to plan too much as really they just play with what they want to. I could rotate toys and build in trips to the zoo/ park etc, but it is not really planning like you could do with an older child. Also for these ages do you just focus on the first 3 areas of development matters?

- the three year old I don't have much (unless a tuesday) and he won't really talk to me on the walk to nursery so I am struggling with how much planning I should be doing here too.

For those of you who have been inspected by ofsted and had feedback on your planning, do I need a daily, weekly and longerterm plan? My gut is that I do a general plan for each day with a section for each child (including my own). Do they need to be separate though? e.g. I couldn't show a parent if they asked, if it included planning on another child. (I so wish ofsted would just produce suggested templates). Is scribbling in a note book what I am going to do each day enough? How much am I expected to do in terms of links to DM?

Sorry for the 20 questions but I am struggling to produce something that really works. If anyone is prepared to make suggestions or share templated I would be really grateful

Thank you :-)

[smartbear]

We do a longterm (written) plan detailing themes, and suggested activities within those themes. Then a short-term plan (weekly, not necessarily written) of activities that link in to the individual interests of the child, current interests of the group, & can be linked into DM. We may or may not do all or some of these depending upon what the day & the child bring with them but they are there to draw on if needed. Talking through this with Ofsted detailing why activities appropriate for each child & what LOs are has always been enough so far, I think they like to see you've got the detailed knowledge of each child, & a bank of appropriate activities to draw on & know why the one is suitable/engaging/relevant to the other. I've always taken the opportunity to say that part of the CM ethos is the ability to respond to the events of the day & the individual interests of the child & that too much formal planning can inhibit that & so far Ofsted's response to that has been great. Retrospective planning is a wonderful thing!