"The brain wont learn unless it feel secure." Dr. Katie Penry

That is right! No child can focus on learning if his or her mind is going circles and thinking 'what happens next?', 'where are we going now?' and so on... Here is a simple tip to calm things down and to help you with planning. It is helpful, effective, and convenient for everyone. Set routines and schedules in early childhood education. It has benefits for teachers, children, and parents too! Keep on reading.

Who uses Kindiedays?

Why love routines?

Teachers love routines. Consistent routines reduce planning time and general commotion in the kindergarten or preschool. The teacher feels that the situation is in control and he/she knows what happens next / tomorrow.

Children love routines. Consistent routines make children feel more safe, calm, and productive. Children feel excited and motivated when they know what is going to happen in the kindergarten.

Parents love routines. Consistent routines decrease stress levels, help with organizing the practical issues and give peace of mind.

So plan each day and each week at the early childhood education based on the same routine. Follow further to see concrete examples.

A digital tool like Kindiedays help you stay organized

How to make a daily schedule?

The kindergarten's or preschool's daily schedule is very important. It lays the foundation for each day! When the basic structure is well planned, the children feel happier, more relaxed, and confident of knowing what will happen next.

You have to take several issues into account when planning the daily schedule:

• What time does the kindergarten/preschool open?
• What time is breakfast/lunch/snack time?
• Is there nap time for the little ones?
• What time does the kindergarten close?

When these basic blocks and times are clear to you, it is pretty easy to build the structure of the daily schedule. Customize the schedule according to your routines.

Here is an example of a daily schedule according to a Finnish kindergarten:

Daily schedule

7:00 Good morning and welcome! Kindergarten opens

7:30-8:30 Breakfast

8:30-10:00 Outdoor playtime

10:15-10:30 Circle time

10:30-11:00 Playtime and activity time

11:15-12:00 Lunchtime

12:00-14:00 Nap time / Storytime and Free play

14:30 Snack time

15:00-17:00 Outdoor playtime

17:00 Bye-bye, see you! Kindergarten closes

Make a visible timetable on the wall, so that the teachers and parents, can see it. After the schedule is visible, everyone knows what happens and when. Nobody needs to fuss. The daily schedule is helpful for the parents as they try to understand their child's day. The same is true for any new staff member.

How to make an effective, yet convenient weekly plan for early childhood education?

Are you preparing activities ahead of time? But still, you are not feeling fully prepared when it’s time to start the day with the little ones? → Do you feel like your lesson planning is just colorful patches here and there? Rather than a finished, harmonious quilt?

Kindiedays' early childhood professionals and Angela Watson combined their thoughts. How to do clever and effective planning for early childhood education?

Overcome the problems with our creative, effective, and concrete solutions!

Who uses Kindiedays?

1. How to organize and save activity ideas?

PROBLEM:

I collect so many great ideas, but then I’m not sure how to use them and when. →  I have all those colorful patches but they are different shapes and sizes and do not go together.

SOLUTION:

• Have a good organizational system (Google drive, Pinterest...)

• Keep the ideas organized by topic or unit, and then all you have to do is go through that folder before planning each unit and decide what to actually use

2. How to reduce the amount of useless activities?

PROBLEM:

I have wayyyy too many options for activities. There are so many free resources available online these days. → There are so many colors and fabrics and styles and I cannot decide what kind of quilt I would like to make!

SOLUTION:

• Get rid of the things that are lower quality (eg. learning goals are not aligned with your curriculum)
• If you’re afraid you might want to use the resources one day, put them in a folder and name it “not using”. Then they’re out of your way
• Quality, not quantity! Make it your goal to do fewer things, so you can do the things that remain even better
• Keep only the best resources. Then you don’t have to waste time going through the things that aren’t that useful with your group of children
• Create a collection of open-ended and versatile activities. These you can use flexibly with many lessons and themes

Read more about our high-quality → Kindiedays Lesson Plans

3. Planning the lessons in detail

PROBLEM:

I am stuck on this hamster wheel - I never know what we are doing the next day in the classroom. → Every day I just pick some piece of fabric from the pile and start sewing without a clear sewing pattern in my mind.

SOLUTION:

• Decide a specific theme for each day that remains the same eg.
  • Monday: science
  • Tuesday: maths
  • Wednesday: arts
  • Thursday: physical exercise
  • Friday: free play

• Make a visible timetable on the wall! Put the timetable in a place that it is visible for the parents too, then they know what their children have been up to!

• Break down what you’ll be doing each day. Here is an example for a week with a Halloween theme:
  • Monday: science → Baking pumpkin pie
  • Tuesday: maths → Spider web counting activity
  • Wednesday: arts → Paint pumpkins (orange apple prints)
  • Thursday: physical exercise → Spider web yarn maze
  • Friday: free play → Roleplay clothes available

• Plan all 5 days in advance. Most of the planning work should be done before Monday morning
• Planning with a co-worker would be amazing, so do that if possible
• Organize regular planning meetings once a week

Check out our → Kindiedays Lesson Plan template

4. How to plan the daily lesson plans?

PROBLEM:

Despite having a plan for the week, I often end up forgetting to do something each day! → Even though I have the 'big picture' sewing pattern in my head I tend to forget some pieces from the middle of the quilt..!

Are you preparing activities ahead of time, but still you have to do more planning every night and are not feeling fully prepared when it’s time to teach?

Angela Watson shared her ideas about clever and effective lesson planning and how to escape the daily lesson planning trap.

1. Organizing and saving ideas

PROBLEM:

I collect so many great ideas, but then I’m not sure how to make it all happen. I feel like the problem is that I just end up downloading random stuff and then when it’s time to plan the unit, I have too many options. I just see something online and think that’s a great activity and I buy it without thinking if I even need another resource for this particular theme. I want to use them all, but in the end I cannot and it’s too much to go through them all.

SOLUTION:

• Have a good organizational system (Pinterest, Google drive...)

• Keep the ideas organized by topic or unit, and then all you have to is go through that folder before planning each unit and decide what to actually use

2. Resources and activity ideas

PROBLEM:

I have wayyyy too many options because there are so many free resources available these days. And generally, curriculum companies provide way more activities and resources than you can ever use. Going through all of that is be too time consuming and overwhelming.

SOLUTION:

• Get rid of the things that are lower quality (eg. learning goals are not aligned with your curriculum)
• If you’re afraid you might want to use the resources one day, put them in a folder and name it “not using” and then they’re out of your way
• Make it your goal to do fewer things, so you can do the things that remain even better
• Keep only the best resources so that you don’t have to waste time going through the things that aren’t that useful with your group of children
• Create a collection of open-ended and versatile activities that you can use flexibly with many lessons and themes

Read more about our high-quality → Kindiedays Lesson Plans

3. Planning the lessons in detail

PROBLEM:

I am stuck on this hamster wheel - I never know what we are doing the next day in the classroom. There is no choice but to spend every evening planning the next day’s activities, which is exhausting for me as the teacher and it also tends to lead to lessons that aren’t necessarily that cohesive in the long run.

SOLUTION:

• Break down what you’ll be doing each day
• Plan all five days in advance
• Plan the details of the lessons on a weekly basis
• The most of the planning work should be done before Monday morning so that you’re not trying to figure out in the evenings what you’re going to do with the children the next day
• Planning with a co-worker would be amazing, so do that if possible
• Organize regular planning meetings once a week

Check out our → Kindiedays Lesson Plan template

4. Worksheets and printables

PROBLEM:

I felt like there were so many printables and worksheets that I wanted to use, but it was overwhelming. I wasn’t really thinking about which ones I was actually going to use. I was just sort of printing them all out and deciding in the beginning of the lesson. So it was just like this stack of papers that maybe I would use and maybe I wouldn’t.

An effective lesson gives children

• Something to think 
• Possibilities to interact
• Possibilities to ask questions
• Information based on their background knowledge
• Possibilities to build new skills

"A lot of approaches to lesson planning are content-driven, giving teachers some boxes to fill in," says Peter Brunn, director of professional development at the Developmental Studies Center in Oakland, Calif., and author of The Lesson Planning Handbook. "While these approaches include what we want to teach, they don't often contain HOW we're going to teach it." It's the "how," says Brunn, that makes all the difference in whether children actually learn.

Check out the Kindiedays Lesson Plans

Effective lesson planning requires the teacher to determine three essential components:

1. Objective
2. Body
3. Reflection

OBJECTIVE

To start, come up with an active objective. Try to create it so that the lesson seems engaging.

"Today we'll explore the different styles of jumping" gives a signal for the children that they get to test it out together with you.

Brunn encourages teachers to create lessons that allow children to investigate various possibilities—even wrong answers—so that they truly understand why something is right. "You can't wing that kind of lesson," he says. "You have to set it up intentionally."

Get 6 free Kindiedays Lesson Plans

BODY

Once you have an active objective, it's time to plan the body of the lesson. Brunn suggests writing down open-ended questions and deciding how you will ask them and what you will do if your children don't or can't answer these questions. How will you probe their thinking? You need to continually facilitate the lesson to keep children focused.

During a jumping themed lesson, you could ask children questions as:

• Can you teach me to jump?
• Which animals or insects know how to jump?
• Are frog jumps and bunny jumps different? How?
• Can you jump down from objects?
• Can you jump up on objects?
• Can you jump over objects?
• What muscles you need for jumping?
• How many times you can jump? 5? 10? 20?
• How far are you able to jump?
• What is the smallest jump you can make?

Have some materials ready, for example a pillow that children can jump onto. Or a stable chair that children can jump down from. A measure is interesting too, in order to measure how far the children can jump.

And check before jumping that the gym floor is not slippery or ask the children take socks off! This lesson can be easily organized outdoors too, for example in a forest.

Allow children to move, test, try, investigate and have fun!

REFLECTION

Next, it's reflection time. Ask children what they learned and what they think you could have done differently. Brunn says the answers will help you end the lesson thoughtfully.

During reflection time, you can have a relaxation moment and for example give a little leg massage after all the jumping.

How to get there depends on your starting point and the state of guidelines for early childhood education in your country. Often this is referred to as the “curriculum”, but the term itself has different meanings in different countries or even between professionals themselves.

DIFFERENT VIEW OF “CURRICULUM” AS STARTING POINT

In Finland the national / city / kindergarten specific curriculum means a guideline of how to work and sets the pedagogical objectives. It doesn't specify milestones for children's learning or lesson plans that should be run.

Some other countries consider the word curriculum as a syllabus consisting of preplanned lesson plans for a term. While other countries see curriculum as a set of milestones / learning objectives that children should get to practice and reach.

None of these alone gives a complete answer for how to go ahead to provide quality education!

SOLUTION TO GO FORWARD

No matter what curriculum means to you or in which country you live in:

For quality education, teaching activities must be goal-oriented and organized in a purposeful manner.

Building on your starting point and expanding it, you should take the whole learning process into consideration:

1. Set the pedagogical objectives for children’s learning.
2. Plan the lessons to match the objectives, taking children's interests into consideration.
3. Observe and document the learning moments and engage families.
4. Assess and reflect on the learning and plan future learning.

KINDIEDAYS PEDAGOGCAL MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

Kindiedays supports the whole learning process in a flexible way so you can build on what you already have in place.

First, Kindiedays can offer the Finnish curriculum’s pedagogical objectives that in addition to children’s own interests guide the activity planning. But you can also use your own pedagogical objectives as starting point.