9 Program Planning

Developmentally appropriate programming is a cornerstone of any great early learning program. Your programming puts your philosophy into practice and showcases the intent and skill your teachers bring to their work.

A quick internet search will yield various free resources and ideas for programming and lesson planning. Some of these tools might be great, while others might be mediocre or misguided. Unfortunately, many off-shelf program products are not financially feasible, and it’s unlikely that a mass-produced lesson plan will apply to all classrooms.

Instead, you’ll need to focus on building out a lesson plan that best fits your classroom values and your children’s capabilities. In this guide, we’ll share a few tips to remember when building lesson plans for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to meet their individual needs and set them up for developmental success.

Make Learning the foundation

You should always relate high-quality lesson plans to specific learning goals, so it’s best to use lessons that detail what, why, and how children will learn.

Your lesson plans should outline daily lessons, activities, and goals with a focus on:

• Key learning objectives
• Necessary and available resources
• Method of introducing new lessons and concepts
• Assessment of outcomes and comprehension
• Engagement

Here are a few ways to ensure you’re building a programming that supports learning and growth:

Consult Your Early Learning Framework

Before building out your lesson plan, it’s a good idea to consult your early learning framework. This framework is a roadmap of the skills and knowledge children should develop throughout their time in childcare and preschool.

The early learning framework is one of the places you can source the “why” and the “what” behind your planning. Your lesson plans should cover all aspects of a child’s development and connect to your age group’s developmentally appropriate learning goals.

You’ll also want to familiarize yourself with your local early learning framework to ensure your children prepare for the next step, whether preschool, kindergarten or another track.

Developmental Assessment

Ongoing child assessment has many benefits for both educators and children. First, it provides a complete picture of each child’s developmental stage so you can meet them where they are. It also provides feedback on your lesson plans so you can accurately address the needs of your class.

Finally, a child assessment is a helpful resource you can share with parents to keep them updated on their child’s progress and how they can continue learning at home. Parents want to ensure their children are on track, and a comprehensive assessment is a great way to keep them informed.

Similar to your early learning framework, your developmental assessment outlines the different skills you should support in your children’s development. While you could decide to use your framework as part of your observation and assessment, it might be simpler to pull your learning goals from a developmental assessment tool (such as the DRDP) instead.

Ultimately, you’ll want to establish your framework for early learning so your programming can best support your children’s development. Choose the system that works best for you and your children—you know them best!

Writing Lesson Plans

When planning your programming, you might ask yourself where to begin. You might be unsure of how many lessons to plan or if you need to include something just because it is popular or in season.

While planning tends to be a very personal process, it can be helpful to have some guidelines for how to get started. So here’s an essential piece of lesson planning advice: start with your children and your community and what’s most exciting and relevant to them.

There’s no limit to what you could explore in your classroom, so narrow your options down by focusing on what your children are currently interested in.

If it’s the beginning of the year and you’re not sure what your children like yet, start with the standard “About Me” unit! This unit helps you to get to know your children while also helping them feel comfortable. Throughout that unit, you’ll learn what topics your children are interested in so you can dive in more deeply in the future.

Another lesson planning tip is to use the skills and milestones outlined in your early learning framework when searching for activity ideas. For example, a quick internet search of “one-to-one correspondence activities for preschool” will provide a range of ideas. Use your best judgment to pick lessons you think will work well in your classroom.

Check out our free daily lesson plan template as a starting point and customize it to suit your teaching style and children’s needs.

Infant Lesson Plans

Your infant lesson plans will be the most individualized and grounded in developmental milestones compared to the programming for other age groups. Infants develop so rapidly that age differences of only a few weeks can translate into very different developmental goals. For example, an infant just working on rolling over will have other goals than an infant who is getting ready to crawl.

Don’t panic—you don’t need to write an entirely different lesson plan for each infant every week! Instead, think about lesson plans that apply to the whole group with a small section dedicated to each infant’s individual development.

For example, you can pick 1-3 developmental milestones for each infant to work on that week and plan related activities to support those goals. You’re likely already thinking about your infants’ developmental progress—document these details and share them with parents so they’re more connected with their infants’ progress.

Parents of infants will likely look to their teachers and care providers to be trusted experts on how their little one is developing. So the better you can speak to their infants’ current and upcoming milestones, the more at ease parents will feel.

Toddler Lesson Plans

When writing lesson plans for toddlers, prioritize flexibility. For example, toddlers may be happy doing the same activity repeatedly one day, only to tire of three different activities in a row the next day.

Use your lesson plans to capture the broad ideas of what you’re exploring together while leaving room for toddlers to take the programming in their direction. If it sounds like you need to have an infinite number of lesson plans, remember that your toddlers will also want repetition, so you may only need to plan two to three new activities for the week. You can repeat and adapt these activities daily (for example, by adding new materials). You’ll know when your toddlers lose interest, and it’s time to introduce something new.

Evaluating Lesson Plans

As an educator, it’s always a good idea to find ways to improve your instruction, programming, and skills. Evaluating your lesson plan helps you find new ways to improve your activities, instruction, materials, and the overall plan itself.

During your evaluation, identify any challenges you or your children faced regarding your instruction and their comprehension and engagement.

For many educators, our best ideas are spur-of-the-moment and often inspired by the children. For this reason, it’s essential to ensure parents know your lesson plans operate as a guide and aren’t set in stone.

Present your programming as living, breathing, and changing lesson plans while updating parents on what happens in the classroom daily. This will allow you to be an effective teacher for your preschoolers and an educator who parents can trust.

Programming Visibility & Families

You can meaningfully engage families by bringing visibility to what the children are learning daily. Share your weekly lesson plan and daily activities with families to partner and build strong home-to-school connections. With access to the weekly lesson plan, families will be better equipped to support their children’s development at home.

Chapter Attribution

Chapter adapted from Brightwheel. (2023, March 16). Curriculum Planning 101: Lesson Plans for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. [blog]. https://blog.mybrightwheel.com/build-lesson-plans-infants-toddlers-preschoolers