Thursday, July 25, 2013

Planning Your Kindergartener's Day

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Kindergarten is such a fun time!  Your child is growing by leaps and bounds, able to learn so much information, and still loving to be active and play.  How do you make sure that you're fitting it all in?

As my son has grown out of the preschool age and into a 'real' school aged child, I have been slowly transferring some of his daily responsibilities over to him.  While I am still making sure that things run smoothly, I like him being able to see what he needs to do in a day.


A Kindergartener's Day


Room Responsibility

  • Their own room is a great place to start!  Show your child how to make their bed (don't be too picky!) and clean up their floor.  Provide good storage places so that they have a place to put all their toys, books, and clothes.
Personal Hygiene
  • Have your child pick out their own clothes and dress themselves (unless you have somewhere special to go, and then you might want to help!)  Each morning have them get dressed and brush their teeth themselves.  I know 5 year olds still need some help adequately getting their teeth clean, but I like to let my son do it himself in the morning so he can learn!

Learning

  • Being that we homeschool, there are some learning activities that are required each day.  I like to break it up throughout the day, but my son knows that there are certain things he has to get done each day.  He is also required to spend some time reading each afternoon for a quiet time.
Play!
  • 5 year olds are going to want to (and should!) spend the majority of their day playing.  This can range from outdoor activities to imaginative play, puzzles, arts and crafts, etc.


Keeping it Organized with A Plan in Place



Over the past year, I have tried many different ways to keep things straight.  I don't like it when my children follow me around saying "what can I do?" so I have tried different types of lists and charts, hoping to provide them with ideas  =)

About three months ago, I began using the Early Learner planner from my sponsor A Plan in Place.  I have found that it has been a perfect solution keeping it all straight and organized!

The majority of the planner is the weekly pages.  There is a page for each week, and you can write in what your child need to be doing each day.  I write in one day at a time, as to not overwhelm my son.  There are rows for Math, Language Arts, and then Other (I usually put History there).

Any planner you use is going to have a section like that, but what sets A Plan in Place apart is all of the thoughtful extras that they include!  (Check out these Early Learner sample pages for a better idea.)

Early Learner 'Extras'


  • Daily Checklist - Remember the parts of a kindergartener's day that I talked about above?  They are all accounted for in the daily checklist.  This is just a quick spot for your child to look on each weekly page to make sure they are on track!  The beauty of the Early Learner planner is that it has words and pictures so it works whether or not your child is reading yet!


  • Calendars - My son always loves flipping to the calendar pages in his planner.  It is a great way for him to gain familiarity with the layout of a calendar and see if I've written anything fun for the day!  The planner also gives idea of what your child could write/draw in each day (weather, activities, etc.)

  • All About Me! - Remember doing these kinds of pages when you were in school?  I have thought about doing these with my kids, but then I figure they would just get lost, so I haven't bothered.  How ingenious to include it with the planner that has records for the year!  I definitely wouldn't throw the planner out, so it's a great place to include these type of memory pages.  There is also a See How I've Grown page at the end which is a great way to look back at the end of the year!

  • Planning Pages for Mom - While this is a planner for your child, it also includes great pages for you to use for both short and long term planning.  Once again, I often write my plans and idea out, but then misplace the paper or forget that I had saved it on the computer, so I think it's an awesome idea to put it right there in the child's planner.

  • Skills Survey - A great little 'assessment' to do at the beginning and end of the year. 

  • Extra Curricular Activities, Field Trip log, and Achievement log - I just love how this planner keeps everything together, and it's orderly by keeping it together by year.  I had been wanting to keep a list of the books we read aloud, but never knew where to keep the list.  Now I have it on a page in the planner! 

Remember to check out sample pages of all these extras to get a better idea of what I mean!

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Do you have older children too?  A Plan in Place also offers customizable planners for them!  You just tell them what subjects you want and they make it exactly to fit your needs!

They also have a great sale going on right now.  31% off any planners for a particular state each day!  You can find out which state they pick each morning on their facebook page.  Fun!

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