Lesson Planning

I have a 13 month old, so my lesson planning might look different than it would for someone who has a 3 or 4 year old, but I still think this is a pretty good month-plan and can be adapted to any age.  I really like how simple it is and easy to just plan out your month.  

To make it manageable in my life I've decided to do our unit only three days a week.  Maybe I will up this when she gets older or if I really want to do more every week, then I will, but for now, I think 3 times a week will be best.  This also leaves room for days that we can do "field trip" type activities and for those "down" days where you really just want to stay home and play...or go to the park and play...

The basic concept is that you have a weekly theme.  Sometimes a theme will take longer than a week.  That's okay!  You are the "engineer" of this, YOU get to decide.  I have a list of weekly themes that I came up with which are basically just things that I want to "study" and talk about with my daughter.  I didn't use any "curriculum" to come up with it because she's a new toddler.  As she shows more interest in certain activities, I will gear them more toward her interests.  

So, our daily routine will always include a book (probably multiple), music/rhyme, activity and a spiritual component to the day.  We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and so it's important for me to include our beliefs into our week.  Here's an outline of how my "plan" looks.  

Books: The books that I choose will mostly be coming from the library (or my home collection of books).  I want a huge variety of books so that we can have lots of pictures and have fun reading them together.  I will probably use these books throughout the week of the theme and I will try to get a selection of fiction and non-fiction books.  I'll be posting on this site the books that we've been using for our themes, but generally you can google good books to use for your own themes.

Music/Rhymes: I think every child has a love of music to some degree and my daughter especially loves music and rhymes of any sort.  I will include songs and rhymes (I plan to post them on this site as well) that relate to our weekly theme.

Activities: I plan to target a different area through every activity.  Some of my ideas for activities so far are in the areas of: math, writing, arts and crafts, games, art appreciation, nature study, puppetry, physical activities, etc...

Spiritual: Most of my ideas for this will initially be coming from my church's nursery manual.  I like a lot of their ideas and will probably use some of them in our weekly lessons/themes and show how they relate to what we're studying.

So, that's the basic plan!  I'm excited to get started and I think it will provide lots of fun and learning for us throughout the week.