Need Help in Creating a More Structured Day for My Very Small in Home Childcare

K.,
Start simple and work more routine in.

Simple crayon/markers coloring will help.

Decide what times you want meal/snack times, and work around them.

Keep it simple, and you won't go crazy with it.

Alternate crayon coloring with other activities. Crayons are good for 3 year olds now.

you can get more creative with science projects earlier than age 3 (2 year olds are fascinated with a lot of science stuff :)

Good luck,
M.

Hi There,
I have a 3 year old and 11 month old myself... and I take care of a 10 month old and an 18 month old. I have also worked with young children in pre-school and elementary school integerated programs in the past. One website I always reffer to was www.perpetualpreschool.com. It offers ideas given by early childhood educators. It has every theme you could think of, then with each theme it has ideas for crafts, cooking, sensory play, music etc. that goes with each theme. The ideas are easy to adapt for a variety of skill and age levels. Hope this helps!!

K.,

I had the same issue when my Son was in Pre-K. If they are in a 3 yr old pre-K I would Ask the teacher what the routine is at her class, so you can keep the routine the same, and reinforce what they are learning in school, if not, then What I used to do was get up, have breakfast, Brush Teeth, go to windo and learn about the weather, how should we dress today? then get dressed. Then you could do your craft time, then carpet time, the a small free time, then back to calendar learning Teach the days of the week and the month, Then art time. I loved taping large paper to my dishwasher and letting him paint with water colors, it washes right off. Then snack and story time then nap time. After nap time hide and seek, or some fun game. then I would find something to count. or colors to review. then you could build, have "tea and snack time" Free time, ect...

I hope this has been some help.

K..

Hi K.! You are right, it is important for children to feel that there is dependable sequence to such events as eating, resting, toileting, work, and play so that they have the security of knowing what happens next. Once they get used on the daily routine, you will not have a problem with transitions. Find some bell, song or light change that will always prepare them in advance that soon will be the time for change. Take care to always give them clear instructions. Also, the major emphasis should always be on learning through play. Large blocks of free, uninterrupted time should be made available. You need to be there and observe your girls, so you can turn the fight into a learning opportunity. Also, include art time and going outside into your daily schedule. If not outside, then inside exercise, like dancing, creative movement, games. Plan the day; know your routine, like breakfast, two hours of free play, art time, snack, going out, lunch, nap time follow lunch, reading the book, song or finger play, free play again. Yes, there are great resources on the internet for the activities, or if you just want to learn more – I don’t have the link, but if you search a little bit, you’ll find it. You can also buy inexpensive child care curriculum CD with printable activities on ebay. Also, there are nice videos on youtube, like ‘cullens abc’, with lots of activity ideas and finger play songs. Good luck, and enjoy the time you all spend together!

There's a book by Dr. Mike Meyerhoff called Bright Start that has 146 activities for 0-4 to help develop your child's potential. Dr. Meyerhoff used to be a consultant to Discovery Toys, which carries many developmental products for young children that may be helpful to you. I can send you a recipe for making your own play dough, and you can use a product like Place & Trace to cut the dough (or cookie dough) into dinosaur shapes and dogs and airplanes and more. The product does double-triple duty as a stencil and puzzle. www.toysofdiscovery.com

Hi K., I'm a stay at home mom to my 2 1/2 year old son and although he is not in preschool yet I thought we needed to have a more structured day. We do a lot of learning games and reading but I need our day to be more scheduled, so I did some research this weekend and found a really great site called daycare.com. It is geared at preschools and daycares but I thought I would give it a shot. For 15.00 you get a full month of lesson plans, activities, activity calendars and themed posters. I ordered for the month of February that way I have time to get any supplies I might need. I can't wait to start!

The women who runs the website also has her own daycare and I checked out her daily schedule to get some idea's on how to set up our day. She also has a weekly meal plan which is all organic, so I got some new meal idea's for free as well.

Hope this helps. If you try it let me know how its going for you and I'll do the same. Have a great day!

familyfun.com is also a good website and themes are a good idea also, good luck

Hey K.,

I own a childcare center/nursery school and what we do is pick a theme each week. Along with that we try to learn a color, shape, number, letter all depending on the age. We change our activity every half hour. Example, for a three year old we open at 7:30 we have free play for one hour (organized we do centers, kitchen area etc) then at 8:30 breakfast, snack, 9:00 circle time we do the calender, discuss the weather, sing songs, etc. 9:30 what ever project we are doing craft, work sheet etc. 10:00 outdoor play (weather permitting) if can't go outside we do some type of dancing, physical activity 10:30 we practice Montessori so we do those activities until around 11:15 and then a quick storytime before release of part timers and then lunch at 11:30 for the kids who remain for the day. We then have nap time at 12:00 until around 2 when they wake they are allowed to get up and do something quiet while the others still rest puzzles, coloring etc. 2:30 usually do music and movement, or sometimes they will do some Montessori Activity. At 3 we release again and then for those who stay until 6 we have snack at around 3:30 from there we have aftercare which again is organized free play, playdough, puzzles, coloring, centers, etc. I am not sure where you live but there are some really nice school supply stores that sell books with many different ideas. Also Mailbox (that's the name of the company) has a nice selection of activities for each month. You can go on the website and have the books mailed to you. Another idea is to try to reinforce what they are learning at preschool. Maybe their teacher can give you an idea of what is upcoming each week and you can follow her lead. We do a newsletter so each parent knows what is coming each week. I know what you are talking about free play is a necessary tool for child development but to much of a good thing is a recipe for disaster. I hope this helps. Good luck!!

I became a sahm in feb 08 and worked in daycare for yrs prior to the switch. my daughter eill be turning 4 and we like noggin.com, in doing my lesson plans i also enjoyed using debs pre-schohttp://www.mamasource.com/respond/11159724983138123777ol fun pages ut i thought it was a fee of $25 but i thought it was well worth it. In my experience i have found that offering 2 choices with boundaries really helped to create structure. taking something out and putting it away before you get something else also helps, and bake or cook something.

I am kind of in the same boat. We are just getting settled in with this new place and my new at homeness... So I am looking too .. I am a new full time SAHM (did work as a RN, 3-12s) We plan to homeschool our kids, they are now ages 3 1/2 and 22 mos. My mom is a preschool teacher (she is WV though) and she is so helpful with little ideas and crafts -- she just recently sent me this link http://www.drjean.org/ Also I have the book supernanny and she has some great ideas -- love that book, but she highly suggests a schedule. I am working on a schedule that will be with pics and words and on velcro so we can change things around.. Hopefully we will get that done soon. That is the grand plan taken from advice from my mom and supernany...

hi
my son really enjoys starfall.com it can be used as either an online resource or, i believe, it has downloadable pages for you to print out and share. oh- it is geared towards the learning how to read. from learning the alphabet up through reading stories. i also got a friend the book "unplugged play". it is not going to plan your day, but it could give you some ideas of activities to do through out your day. good luck!

Hi,
I have been a special education teacher for 13 years, but I do teach them the regular ed curriculum just using different strategies and modalities so they are able to understand the work. I started my teaching career in a private school teaching early intervention and then pre-k for about 7 years and I was also the lead teacher. Structure/routines are critical at this age, because they will get used to it now and the transition will become much easier for them later on. I like that you are asking for help on this subject, because most students don't learn this until later on and it is more difficult to teach the older children who never had structure or routines in their daily lives. You said that they go to school 2x a week 1/2 days. Have you looked at the schedule that they follow at school. That is where I would start, so you can be consistent as to what their routine is at school and apply it to home which will be much easier for you and for them. It is difficult having downtime, that is when things get chaotic. You should make a schedule that implements what they are doing in school and for the time that they are home, ex/ 8:00-8:35 breakfast/bathroom 8:40-9:10- Language Arts-9:15-9:45- Arts and crafts- 9:50-10:20- choice time etc. When they have choice time, you should pick 3 different things that you know they like to do, or 2 and one of your own, it is difficult when children have free reign. Also let them know that when they make a choice, they have to stay at that area. Other times which is great, you can set up 3 centers, set a timer for 10 minutes and let them begin at one center or different centers and every time the bell rings, they change and go to a different center. I put the activities in 30 min increments, you may want to change that. Remember that at this age, they will not want to stay with an activity for a long period of time. You want to put a schedule up for the day with the times and activities and go over it in the morning with them so they know what their day looks like. Sorry if I am jumping around, there is so much information to give you, but don't want to overwhelm you. I just went back to what you wrote, the first thing that they should do is get dressed as if they were going to school. Also if you don't have this, make an area just for their schooling. You want it to be seperate from the house, or in a different place where you can set up different stations which is very important. Yes, all children have battles, even at the age of 15, but you can decrease these battles. Like I said I have so much information and I don't know where to start or if your home is set up like a classroom. Just want to give you a background on me. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology and went on to get my masters in special education grades N-12 and a certification in elementary education. I also am certified in ESL, TCI from Cornell, (Theuraputic crisis intervention), power point presentation at Hunter College on The form and Functions of the Writing Workshop 2/3 graders, many awards over the years and hundreds of letters from parents, students and colleagues. I worked very hard with a student in pre-school. She spoke jargon and they told her mother that she would never talk and always stay in special ed, that is not something that should be said at all. Well, I had this student for 2 years and worked with her after school and I put her in regular ed for kindergarten and she is doing so nicely, she is at the top of her class and this was in 2001. There are so many activities that you can do with them, what is important and fun is morning circle. I am sure that they have that in school. The days of the week are up, months of the year, the day and date and you sit around singing, saying hello with the hello song and you sing the days of the week song, months of year song, go through shapes, colors, etc. The kids will learn the days of the week and months of the year, which a high percentage of older kids do not know. Lessons- you can do colors and one day can be red and you give them different pictures of things that are red to color in. The can make a book of this when they are done. Also they are using fine motor skills, during this. You can print pictures from the computer or if you live in the city, they have guys on the street selling books for different age levels. You can do letters, starting with A and talk about different words that begin with the letter A and have them decorate it with different things, colored pasta, textured paper etc. I am going to stop here, this is getting long, but if you want more suggestions, I have a million. Also, read-aloud is the most important thing that you will do with these kids. They gain knowledge, help with following directions, you will ask questions during the read aloud, that is memory, sequencing, fluency, building vocabulary, reading with expression etc. You should also have a word wall. O.K their is also a site that you do have to pay for but it is great. It is called teachervision and they have everything on there. Let me know if you need any more help and I have a million books here if you live close and I can give you ideas. Have a great day.
L. R.(Sorry if their are typos, responding quickly)