A right old pickle - too much planning and help needed!

[itsybitsyteeny]

76277627

I am new to this and feel I am getting the planning completely wrong. I have one 17 month old at the moment. 2 full days and 1 half day per week. I have been planning activities to cover the 7 areas for EACH day 'E' attends. As you can imagine I don't get time to do most of them in between outings, lunchtime and nap. I am doing weekly observations and writing a few sentences under 'next steps'. I noticed that E does say circle, square, rectangle but hasn't identified 'triangle' so I was going to cut triangle shapes and let E paint them and I put this under next steps. I wonder if the few sentences I write under next steps would actually be fine for individual planning and I need to scrap this thing I am doing where I am listing 7 activities for the 7 areas per day!

Thanks so much for reading and if you could offer some guidance I would really appreciate it. I have attached the lengthy planning I have been doing that I feel I need to cut down.

[Bumble Beez]

Hey Hun,

I've looked at your plans and they are very full and in depth...which is fantastic...but I would expect this type of plan with this many activities to cover about a month.
If the child is only doing 2.5 days a week then that is a lot to try and squeeze in!

Also free play and child initiated play is just as important as planned activities...sometimes with more opportunities for observations and assessments :)

They way you're linking with the child's interests is wonderful...
They way you're thinking about next steps etc is great too...

What you're doing is fantastic, so don't feel you're getting it 'wrong' as such...

Try for just one or two of the seven areas to observe in a week, so that all areas are covered in a month.

Hope that helps a little :D

Sarah x

[Maza]

I agree with Bumble Beez.

The planning is lovely but I would struggle to fit all of this into one week for a full timer, let alone a part timer. Try to just have one story a week as your focus because children need lots of repetition and will enjoy reading the same story for a few days. Also, if you are doing that many sensory activities (slime/porridge oats, spaghetti) you will spend half of your life cleaning up! Remember, you can give them sensory experiences (which are very important) by the everyday things that you do - such as listening for the sounds in the garden, running barefoot in the grass, sniffing flowers in the garden. You have lovely ideas and I like how you use the child's interests to help you with planning.

You certainly haven't been doing it wrong! Planning does take some getting used to and I think we have all tweaked our planning since our early days. It's all part of the continuous evaluation that we have to do!x

[itsybitsyteeny]

Thank you for your replies - some really nice comments so thanks. Bumble beez I just wanted to see what you think..

"Try for just one or two of the seven areas to observe in a week, so that all areas are covered in a month."

So for example where E hasn't yet identified triangle I could plan something to encourage that during the week and link to maths and then another could be E is identifying birds so plan to look at bird books and link to literacy for example and that would be my plan for a week. Then do obs and plan another 2 activities linking to different areas of the EYFS for the next week?

I have also been putting photos in the learning journey each day which I may cut down to a few monthly - is that ideal?

[Bumble Beez]

Sounds great...

Do the shapes and birds ideas next week...have a few books to look through, using lolly pop sticks to make triangles etc... repeating these main activities and maybe tweaking slightly if needed over the 2.5 days.
Try offering free play with bricks, small world animals etc to link into these areas too...but they don't necessarily need planning in advance, just have them available to entice LO to explore...

Maybe do one creative activity, something like making bird feeders, painting the following week and gluing the next etc...still linking into LO's main interests and trying to extend their learning too :)

Honestly, you sound like you're doing an amazing job x

Sarah x

[Kirstylob]

I can't see the pics of planning, any ideas why?

[beckygrey]

I can't see pics either

[Rachel6]

I can't see the photos :-(

[blue bear]

I can't see pics either

You probably have an older version of word