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2 year old room planning


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As we have started the 2 year old room just this September&  I’ve worked with 3 year olds and 2’s is something totally new to me !   I just need some guidance on how planning is done and also how to cut out the paper work so I can do less! As I feel like I’m doing too much as I’ve done that much for the 3’s.
5 adult led a week and continuous provision which Is changed everyday & child interest is included in as well as well as themes!🤷🏻‍♀️
Then we have 5 - 8 mins of key worker time as well everyday with our own groups. 
Is there anything that you could share with me - ie ur planning format that I could share with my team, or any other suggestions. 
Sorry, for a long winded message. 


 

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Hi

I work with twos too...I use in the moment planning.  You do seem to be doing an awful lot...especially for this age group.  

First off - id suggest stop changing your 'continuous' provision daily - I keep ours much the same all the time...its what the children and adults do with what is there that changes it...no day is ever the same.  We have all the basic provision available all the time (either accessible or on request) so small world,  role play, sensory play, art and craft, physical play, books, singing etc ..not in huge quantities but a selection in baskets and we add more as interest grows if necessary.  

Themes really aren't necessary especially for this age....you'll find children enjoy repeating their own play themes anyway so just have some prop boxes for extending their pretend play such as 'dolls ' doctors', 'kitchen' or schemas ' transporting, rotation, scattering, trajectory...etc...these kind of simple everyday themes arise all the time and with adults interacting and supporting you will be able to make links to all areas easily and without needing to plan for them.  The way adults support in the moment will also take care of adding in your child interests element too.  You can write up how your prop boxes and continuous provision is likely to address each learning area - you only need to do this once and that's your long term plan.  That way you all know why everything is there and what children can gain from it...so you can check that all areas are represented (with your focus on Prime areas of course).

We don't have any adult led activities planned in advance - but every day adults support children as they play ALL day and we record some of the most significant activities / experiences that happen  afterwards (what, what the adult did and what children gained / impact)  - that's it. 

I haven't had a week yet where we haven't touched on all the areas and children are absolutely thriving on the freedom and adult attention.  

Id recommend getting Anna Ephgrave's book 'planning in the moment with young children (or searching for her articles online) and sharing that with your team.

Keep it simple and remember that planning isn't the most important thing -  make the most of the opportunities within routines  and provide long periods of free play . This is where most of the real learning will happen IF the adult support and responsiveness is there.

I hope this helps...

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Yep ...everything trekker said, our continuous provision doesn’t change either really, we add enhancements/provocations if our cohort tracking shows progress has not been so good in a given aspect and we scribble up what the large group activities are going to be for the week, but again this is usually to support an aspect of less progress, we don’t have planning meetings or do any real planning anymore, I have folders and folders of old planning sheets based on themes and activity plans and I now wonder what the h@#& we wasted all that time and paper doing it for and who will ever look at it again....the children will get what they get from it whether i’ve written it down or not :-) 

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We have a big bit of sugar paper on the wall with the 'provocation' (which might be a 'thing' (like it's snowing), or an idea from something the children have talked about / played previously (like 'have a VET'2 yr old planning spider diagram), or an adult planned activity (like introducing some new resources or cooking)) then staff initial which children did it and then it becomes a spider diagram as staff think about what might come next. I just 'mocked one up' to give you the gist of it - the one we have on our wall is much much messier and more scribbly! It helps though when you have different staff coming in and carrying on with play that has gone before - we are often amazed at where we 'end up'!

 

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  • 2 months later...

Wow thanks for this!

I have been trying to get my head round documentation for in the moment planning for a few months now and disseminate what I know to my staff... and in one post I read on a lazy Sunday morning it suddenly makes perfect sense and I feel like this is a fab way of explaining it too!


Thank you so much Rebecca! 

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Do get hold of Anna Ephgraves book if you can, and share it with the team.  It's a real eye-opener!  I got back to enjoying work once I discovered it - up to then it was all planning and next steps etc.  Everything was much more relaxed and children really 'ran' with their own ideas, and we all learned so much!  We had a learning wall sometimes where I'd write down what we knew about something - cats, for example when one of the children started telling the group about her cat, I noted down what children contributed and as the week went on, we found out more and more, then it leaped to the big cats, and children were finding things out at home to tell us all about.  It was incredible.  Another time we made a pentagon den after a brief discussion about shapes and wigwams.  There may be pictures still in the gallery, or my blog.  Really, do do it, you'll get your weekends back! 😂😁

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22 hours ago, Caitlin Mitchell said:

Wow thanks for this!

I have been trying to get my head round documentation for in the moment planning for a few months now and disseminate what I know to my staff... and in one post I read on a lazy Sunday morning it suddenly makes perfect sense and I feel like this is a fab way of explaining it too!


Thank you so much Rebecca! 

Thank you for being so positive! I'm delighted you think this is useful - actually, since I wrote this my staff have taken this to the next level: They now put a little cloud round an activity when they have done it with all children / when the resources have run out / when they think it's exhausted all possibilities - that way, other staff can see which ideas and activities are 'live'

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