FREE PRESCHOOL PLANNING PAGES

My girls are two and four, and while both girls will attend preschool (to some degree), I am all for implementing enrichment activities to help ignite their love of learning and build a strong foundation for their school success.  Plus, I LOVE watching them learn, get excited about teaching them, and I want to be part of the FUN too!  Oh and, like my tag-line says, “I’m surviving motherhood one engaging activity at a time” – TRUTH!

FIRST UP… Kindergarten Readiness Checklists!  I like to call these the BASICS!  Meaning a list of things your child should know before starting kindergarten.  Now I want to state that there are no single hard lines for kindergarten readiness, just guides to help you identify some of the skills and knowledge that will help your little one be prepared for kindergarten.  And again, as these checklists state, these are recommendations for littles old enough to start KINDER.  So, please remember, when doing activities we are building up to meeting these goals little by little and of course with LOTS of repetition. And if you’re new here, I’m all about EXPOSURE!  Bring it up, chat, put it in front of them, they might not be ready yet, but you never know what they are soaking up.

You can search “pre-k/kindergarten readiness checklist” on google, ask your local school district if they have one, and check out this one I created to get a few ideas.  Familiarize yourself with the “basics” and go from there.

NEXT, for me, is THEMES!  Why do I like using themes?  We all know young learners need exposure and practice with new ideas/skills, again and again, that is KEY!  Using themes helps switch things up and engages them to want to “practice identifying the letters in the alphabet” more than just once!  Also, themes help to build connections across subject areas and in turn help children begin to dive deeper and make connections between experiences. AND for me, using themes makes planning activities that much easier.

And LASTLY, that brings us to PLANNING!  Now that we are familiar with some basic kindergarten readiness skills and have a theme in mind, we are ready to brainstorm a variety of activities that we can pick and pull from throughout the week to engage our littles in learning and fun!  I like to plan a few activities with different skill areas in mind to make sure that I’m hitting a variety of school readiness skills.  One way to do this is to list out the “big skill areas” then jot down themed activities that fall under those categories.

Another way to do this (remember this is enrichment) is bingo board style! Jot down 20 ideas for each month or theme then pick and choose 1 or two a day to complete.

And if you want to take it a step further and plan for 3 or 5 full activity days why not use this simple lesson plan template. Simply write in a read aloud for each day, a literacy activity, math activity, and something hands-on (craft, science, sensory, field trip, etc.)

And that’s a wrap!  Once I have my ideas all jotted down I get to collecting the supplies we will need and we are set for the week.  I don’t have specific days for when we do each thing, rather I pull from the list so that we are engaging in various themed activities throughout the week.  Lots of times I use these as morning activities or “after nap” activities and just kind of go with the flow!  This is enrichment, it is meant to encourage the love of learning, build their basic skills, and be FUN!

Click on ANY IMAGE in this post to grab these planning pages for FREE and let me know if you have any questions or just share with me how you plan activities for your littles.