Tot School Planner

I’ve decided to start Tot School with Evan this Fall. I know this could be extremely difficult with a newborn in the house, but I want to give it a try. Since I’ll probably be operating on limited sleep and nursing around the clock, I wanted to be as planned as possible ahead of time. I also wanted an easy way to stay organized and make sure I’m covering everything I want to with him. The first thing I did was brainstorm and research what subjects, skills and learning objectives I wanted to develop with him. I listed these all out and then came up with a planning form that would help me with this task.

For my purpose, I decided to make a weekly planning form. I feel that it is way too hard to make a daily plan at this point. Sometimes Evan doesn’t want to cooperate, I have other things I need to attend to, or other activities come up. Throw a baby into the mix and I can pretty much guarantee that a daily plan would never get accomplished. I feel that it is much more realistic to aim for weekly goals and even bi-weekly goals. Also, I had already decided to do Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) with Evan as the backbone for Tot School. This is a very relaxed “curriculum” and I hesitate to even call it that. It uses literature as a way to integrate all the other subjects into your teaching. It is set up as a weekly program, so I developed the form with that in mind as well. Each activity covered will be related to the book of the week.

Many of subjects I plan to cover can and will be integrated with several other subjects at the same time. Not every subject will be covered each week either. Sometimes I may even extend the book unit to two weeks. Since Evan will only be 2.5, I want to keep this easy going and fun.  On that note, I don’t expect our Tot School to be very structured and Evan won’t really know that he is doing “school.” Most of the learning will occur through reading and discussing picture books, playing and exploring. This is just a way for me to focus and be intentional with providing learning opportunities for him.

The first page is the Tot School Planner sheet itself. It is divided up by subject. The second page is a list of learning objectives that I hope to cover under each subject. The second page is meant to be a guide for my planning. I use it to spark ideas and to remind myself of exactly what I hope to accomplish at the end of this.  If you’re not sure what learning objectives you should be covering at this age, I hope this guide helps you!

Click here for if you would like to open the file in Office and be able to edit it:  Tot School Planning Form

Click here if you would like the PDF file: Tot School Planning Form

 

For even more Tot School ideas, visit the Tot School Gathering Place.