Did you know you can write preschool lesson plans an entire year in advance? Keep reading to learn more about preschool lesson planning the easy way. This is Step 4 – how to create a list of suggested activities.

 You can read my original post here. 

Preschool Lesson Planning Just Got Easier

Doing your preschool lesson planning a year in advance may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Have you been following along with my easy 5 step system?

As I stated in pervious posts, “these lesson plans do not reflect detailed and scripted daily plans that specify what is to be taught each minute of your teaching time.”  

Instead, these lesson plans reflect an outline of skills and concepts you hope to teach throughout the school year.

That makes writing your preschool lesson plans for the year much easier. You’re just developing a roadmap, also known as a scope and sequence.

You’re going to need that same scope and sequence today, since we are now on Step 4 of how to wrote preschool lesson plans an entire year in advance. If you don’t have that scope and sequence, you can grab it from this post. It’s free.

LEARN HOW TO WRITE LESSON PLANS THE EASY WAY

My system for writing preschool lesson plans is only a few simple steps, and now you can have this easy and quick system delivered right to your inbox, completely free! Just fill out the form below.

How to Choose Preschool Activities for Your Preschool Lesson Plans

You’re almost done!  

But, let me tell you, Step #4 is the most fun of all the steps. This is the step where you get to actually brainstorm and write in activities.  

These activities are not meant to be set in stone, rather they are suggestions of how you would like to teach the given concepts. They are a list of ideas. This is the time that I write down those preliminary ideas. They are all in one place so that I don’t loose them, and organized according to the theme.

Here are some questions to consider when creating your list of suggested activities.

How many preschool activities should I do for each theme?

Well, that depends on a couple of things — how many days a week you will be teaching preschool and what the overall interest level for that theme is.

My in-home preschool program is two days a week, so I make sure I have at least one activity for each preschool day.  If you’re a homeschooling parent who teaches every day, your list is going to be much longer than mine.  

I figure that since each month usually allows me eight teaching days, I plan for ten to twelve activities.  Planning more activities that I “need” not only gives me ideas to further study if the students are really showing a high interest in an area, but it also allows me the flexibility to nix an idea without scrambling to come up with something new.

That being said, sometimes I will be inspired by my students while we are in the thick of a theme and we’ll do something that was never on the list.  Whatever the case may be, it is always a good idea to have a few more suggested activities lined up than you think you will need.

How simple or extensive should these preschool activities be?

I choose the activities to go on my list based more on how valuable I think they will be to my students.  

Some activities are very simple and require little planning, like going for a nature walk. While going for a nature walk sounds really basic, it is drenched in what I like to call “educational nutrition.” This comes about when an activity has many facets and opportunities for follow-up. Students not only enjoy being out in nature, but they can search for specific items. They can use magnifying glasses to examine interesting things they find. They can be scientific observers and record the things they see in journals. They can bring baggies to make collections.  This list goes on and on.

Some activities are much more extensive from a planning standpoint. I like to include a few of those in my list of suggested activities as well. There is value in students working multiple days on one project, and there is also value in teaching students to follow specific steps within a project to get the desire outcome.  (Although, process is also just as important, and sometimes even more important).

The point is, however you choose these activities, whether they be simple (at first sight) or extensive, they should be rich in educational nutrition. Remember, you striving for “an inch wide and a mile deep.”

What is the best way to record these ideas?

If you’re a teaching (and that includes homeschool parents) you are probably a creative person who is always thinking up new ideas. So, you need a place to record all your ideas in one place so you can refer back to them throughout the school year.

Having them in a single template will make your preschool lesson planning so much easier!

Click the image below to download the exact template I use. It’s fully editable, which means you can type right into the form and don’t even have to print it out of you don’t want to!

You can use the above template to write out your list of suggested activities.

If you decided to do your math lesson plans thematically as well, then you can also go back to fill in those black spaces on the templates I gave you on Step 2.

RECAP ON HOW TO WRITE PRESCHOOL LESSON PLANS

STEP 1: CREATE A CALENDAR
STEP 2: DECIDE HOW TO TEACH READING AND MATH
STEP 3: DECIDE ON THEMES
STEP 4: CREATE A LIST OF SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES
STEP 5: BONUS! – ORGANIZING LESSON PLANS

Looking for Done-For-You Preschool Lesson Plans?

I used this exact planning system when I created The complete Preschool Curriculum.

The Complete Preschool Curriculum has everything you need to teach your preschoolers literacy and math in a fun and engaging way, without all the boring worksheets!

This resource currently includes 36 weeks of:

• oral language lessons
• phonological awareness lessons
• phonics lessons
• math lessons from all five disciplines of math (number sense, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis)
• 82+ math and literacy printable centers
• editable preschool portfolio
• editable preschool portfolio monthly planning checklist

With detailed lesson plans offering an array of daily teaching options, you can cut your lesson planning down to a fraction of the time while still offering your preschoolers the best possible learning experience.

This resource is currently being updated and will soon feature 40 weeks of instruction. Any purchases made today will automatically receive the latest updated version when it becomes available in summer of 2021.

Even More Preschool Lesson Plans

Don’t need the entire curriculum? Here’s a breakdown of the individual components:

Sarah Punkoney, MAT

I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.

stayathomeeducator.com/