HOWEVER.
I have four children. One of them is doing grade work. Two of them are in preschool. One of them just likes to destroy things.
I tried doing the same laid back, unplanned, let it happen style preschool that we did last year and the wee ones were not amused. They took their education into their own hands. They learned about buoyancy by dropping things in the toilet. They experimented with gravity by throwing things down the stairs. They played sorting games with clean, freshly folded laundry. You get the idea, right? It wasn't working.
So this year I am a planning her preschool mama!
I'm still keeping it laid back and play based. I have activities that they can do with minimal supervision and I have some mommy led activities (ie. "work" like big sister). There are some work sheets because they have asked for them but no pressure to finish them.
I plan by the month because I don't have time to plan weekly and I could never sit still long enough to plan the whole year!
I'm continuing with our monthly play doughs and sensory bins (though they often end up staying longer than a month) and I will also rotate the tot trays out monthly. I only have shelves for four trays but I plan eight so I can switch them around if the kids start getting bored.
Our themes change weekly. I try to have a worksheet for each day so the kids can work on that while I work with B. I try to keep a variety on hand: colouring, tracing, cutting, do-a-dot, play dough mats, etc. I try to tie our daily activities into the theme as well (baking, painting & drawing, modelling, crafts and handwork).
W and A are quite happy with our new set up and R isn't crying (much) so I can only assume she likes it too!
I've put together some planning sheets that I thought I would share. There are three: one for the monthly planning, one for weekly planning and one to record everything you need to do, make, buy, etc.
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Monthly Preschool Planning Sheet
Preschool Monthly To Do List
Weekly Preschool Planning Sheet
