follow daily activity plans with the children

emotional turmoil this week has knocked me off track…the joys of self employment.

I need to pull it together now more than ever without the distraction of the toxic shit from before.

Besides, staying busy is my goal now.

I’ve been doing one activity each day. I’ve been doing circle every day before nap too.

I’d wanted to do one thing inside then another outside including all the centers and outdoor centers. That seems to be a little much but I may be able to integrate more eventually.

I feel good about this though, I really do. It’s a great start.

I have a nice simple “lesson plan”. I have some of the materials.

but I just realized that now with (hopefully) both teens helping, there’s no excuse.

I don’t think it’s necessary to do all the activity plans but currently I’m at about 1/3…not good.

I’ll use it as a guideline and as it seems appropriate.

Tomorrow I’ll let them do the window painting and do a music movement activity as planned.

Then back on schedule for Monday, hopefully. I’ve not done a single Montessori lesson. I’ve also been slacking on circle time.

Strep has made it’s way through the daycare kids so hopefully next week everyone feels better.

I have been keeping up with the weekly sensory bins, easel activities and a few choice activities here and there.

HOnestly, that is all I wanted, a foundation. Something to pull from should I be at a loss for something to do.

I would say that a little more to do would be good.

There should be a special activity every day, there really should. Or…maybe on the days I have help. Yeah, that’s it. Also, we need tons of fresh sand for outside and a good scrub for the toys out there.

In the meantime, that is before March 1st, I have been simply adding random type stuff to each learning center so that I am practicing putting something out every day.

Once the actual spring lessons start I will provide a larger variety of interesting stuff but the kids and I will be used to the basic structure.

I have yet to implement the early morning story/meeting time or the self serve snack. I will work on those things next week.

I have plans outlined through March, April and May. I would like to follow them as closely as possible in order to experiment. I’d like to see if it is a reasonable structure on which to base our days.

I left it very loose so as to build around their interests and skill levels. I just sort of needed an outline so that I would have something planned to put on the table each day.

I came up with a really clever structure if I do say so. It contains all of the learning areas, is easy and affordable to follow and works well for home care and mixed ages.

I also wanted to work in a flow of the seasons. I’m not really keen on celebrating holidays but think it’d be nifty to celebrate the changing seasons and have celebrations accordingly (and often!)