How to write lesson plans for preschoolers

Do you work with preschoolers? Do you need guidance on how to write successful lesson plans and ideas? As a preschool teacher I have had years of experience writing lesson plans for my own classroom as well as for programs.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Lesson plan forms to keep track of ideas
• Is your program private or public?
• Ability to research ideas

1. Keep in mind that preschoolers are visual and learn by doing. They love to role play and get messy. Preschoolers are very curious and need a lot of activities to spark their interests. Attention spans also need to be considered.

2. Make sure if you are doing themes that each activity lines up with the theme. If you scatter everything, the children will be confused at what you are trying to teach them. Keeping it in an special order will cause them to learn things quicker. Repetition is important as well.

3. Maybe one week you would like to have a pet week. Make sure you schedule special pet visitors like someone from the humane society or nature center. Have parents volunteer to bring in a pet.

4. Read books that have to do with pets/animals.

5. Do art projects that have to do with animals. Like making animal masks out of paper plates, you can have a parade with the children, they love this.

6. Have a special snack that relate to animals like puppy chow made out of rice chex, animal crackers etc.

7. Make sure you have animal puppets out for free play, maybe even animal costumes.

8. Relating the days to the theme will result in a better learning experience. Taking pictures of these special days then posting them will help children to remember what they learned.

9. Good lesson planning does take time, but you want it to run and work out smoothly to benefit the children. Having any delays in your lesson plans can make it difficult for you and the children. Make sure you have good transitions between each activity.

Tips & Warnings

• Always have your lessons prepared a month in advance so that you can make changes if needed. Since preschoolers are challening, take into consideration that your plans could change at any time. You need to be ready at all times to roll with the punches.
• If you do not stick with themes and solid lesson plans, you will have a chaotic learning environment with no positive guidance. This will frustrate you, the children and even the parents. Parents like to know and see that their children are learning many, many things.