Monthly Plans

[Guest]

HI all

 

I work in a pre-school room and was wondering how you all do your monthly plans.

 

Currently we include 2 sets of stepping stones into each of the six areas of leanring. so for maths we may have begins to count with some numbers in correct order, and then we may have shows an awareness of shapes in environment.

Then for physical we would have, manage body to create intended movements and maybe can stop.... and so forth

 

we generally have two stepping stones in each area, sometimes three.

 

I am thinking that this may be too much for us to focus on each month (our topic only lasts a month).

 

would it be acceptable to have only one stepping stone aspect in each area that way we could focus on one area ie PSE, then maths then KUW etc a week (some weeks we would have to do two, but mostly we could do only one a week) and cover each of the six areas within the month.

 

does any of that make sense?, my head is frazzled with trying to find an easier way to plan... right now i feel all i ever do is plan, and then observe children in activities that they may not neccesarily want to be engaged in.

 

any examples of pre-school planning would be greatly appreciated.

 

Dawn

[Guest]

Hi Dawn.

 

Thanks to NicLDDC, I use her booklet style of planning for LT/MT and ST.

 

You can find it here.

 

I personally try and include 2-3 stepping stones every month for every area. Our themes run over the space of a half term, rather than monthly, but we find we can usually cover all of them. I wouldn't personally do any less than one, but I suppose it's really up to you, juding by the pace in which your children work.

[rosepetal]

Hi SNO,

 

The nursery i work has its theme over a whole term, it has taken me a while to get used to that, i used to do half termly topics which i personally prefer, but after changing jobs i have to do what the whole nursery does, which is a topic done over a whole term, every six weeks we change our medium term planning and then on a weekly basis we try to cover up to at least 3 Stepping Stones, having worked in Early Years for a great number of years now, i am getting fairly good at incorporating the Stepping Stones from different ELG,S into one or two activities, and i always allow for children led activities and children's own interests.

 

If your topic is done over a month a personally would aim for at least two Stepping Stones each week, but you need to do what is best for your setting, and if Ofsted are fine with it, then thats got to be good.

 

To help me get used to the idea of having to do a topic over a whole term, i do sometimes break the topic into mini topics, for example one of our topics last year was "All About Ourselves", inbetween this i did a mini topic on Healthy Eating and a mini topic on Colours. We finish for the summer at the end of July, which means we will have been doing this terms topic for nearly 4 months, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. But i shouldn't really complain, as apart from that i work in a lovely nursery with lovely people.

 

Not sure if any of that has helped you at all.

 

Rosepetal