It's important to start each preschool day the same. Children thrive with routine and you will notice that behavior problems are significantly minimized when children know what's going to happen. A timid child will have less difficulty saying goodby to Mom and an energetic child will get right to work.
Needless to say, each morning for us starts the same. Which means planning is pretty repetitive as well. My first task is to find a theme. I use The Peaceful Preschool curriculum from The Peaceful Press to find a theme.
The next step is to go online and reserve five to six books on the same theme from our local county library system. This planning stage must take place several days in advance in order for the books to be available in time. Otherwise, I have to make an extra trip to the library to pull books myself.
Now I need to come up with several hands-on, student-led, independent activities to set out for stations. When the girls arrive, they immediately begin working on stations and return to these stations during several transition times. I use trays to keep them separated and to minimize mess. The stations are on theme and typically include:
Sensory
Art
Letter of the Week
Math
Writing
Puzzles
The letter and number cards I use are resources from The Peaceful Preschool curriculum bundle that I purchased. Other materials come from Target's dollar spot, Amazon, and my pantry. I try not to spend too much time running around town gathering materials. In my experience, the children don't care how fancy or how perfect your materials are, they just want to play.
Circle time is next. We sing our songs, read our story, move our bodies, review our letters. No weekly planning is involved here. I occasionally add a new song once they grow out of the old ones, but after the initial beginning-of-year planning, this is set in stone for the rest of the year. I don't like to introduce anything new until the girls feel comfortable and settled.
We end circle time with name writing practice. I use a name writing generator that I found on Pinterest called Create Printables.
Finally, our morning time ends with music and movement. To plan for this, I start with Teachers Pay Teachers, then move to YouTube. We especially love Dr. Jean's songs. The poems, songs, and activities stay very close to our theme and/or letter of the week. Pinterest is typically my last resort because most of what I find there re-routes me back to TPT or YouTube anyway.
Planning for our morning routine takes very little time. I try to put most of my energy planning for our main lessons of the day which are phonics and math. Science and other STEAM activities are done on review week and planning for those days looks completely different.
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