How To Plan Preschool Lessons – 7 Tips For Busy Teachers and Parents

Preschool is so much more than just daycare. It might seem like fun and games, but during that preschool year, kids develop skills that set them up for a lifetime of learning.

But don’t stress — even super busy teachers and parents can create engaging and effective lesson plans for preschoolers.

What are the goals of preschool teaching?

The main objective of preschool is preparing kids for kindergarten, with a focus on:

• Communication and language
• Literacy
• Math
• Arts and design
• Understanding the world
• Physical development
• Personal, social, and emotional development.

When children start kindergarten, they should ideally be able to recognize and write their name. They should also be able to count to 20, recognize numbers up to 10, and hold a pencil correctly. If they manage to master a few basic arithmetic tasks and recognize some phonemes, then even better!

But preschool learning is not just about ABCs and 123s. Creative, emotional, social, and self-care skills are also top of the agenda. Playing with others, communicating their emotions, being able to fasten their own coat — these are also things kids should be learning in their preschool year.

Ultimately, preschool teaching helps children make progress in all of the essential learning areas. But it also gives kids plenty of opportunities to play and discover how fun learning can be.

Especially when teachers have a few great preschool lesson plans up their sleeve…

7 preschool lesson planning tips for busy parents and teachers

1.   Understand the bigger picture

Keep the above goals in mind when planning for preschool lessons. What are the overall learning objectives for your children this year? What do you hope to achieve each month?

This “big picture” will look different for each child you’re teaching. It will depend on their level of ability in each area of learning as well as their interests.

2.   Be age-appropriate

If you haven’t taught a preschooler before, know that your preschool lesson plan needs to work around two inescapable facts.

First, preschoolers have short attention spans. Learning sessions of more than 20 minutes will have them fidgeting in their seats and potentially causing mayhem.

Second, preschoolers find it really hard to sit still even at the best of times. Physical, hands-on activities are the way to go.

3.   Give each month or semester a theme

Theme-based learning is really useful for helping students to understand the world around them. It helps them to make connections and apply their knowledge in meaningful ways.

Pick themes that already spark your preschooler’s interest. Think dinosaurs, outer space, baby animals, etc. — and then build activities around your theme. Take Spring, for example. You could grow plants, count flower petals, paint and fold paper butterflies, read books about springtime, take a field trip to a local farm, etc.

It’s possible to incorporate all areas of learning and explore lots of different concepts, all within a single theme.

4.   Create your plan

Time to get some ideas down on paper! But how strictly you organize your days is up to you.

You might like to use a blank calendar, planning activities for each day. Some parents and teachers break each day down into half-hour blocks. They may even plan a similar type of activity for the same time each day (circle time in the morning followed by math puzzles, and so on).

If this sounds too structured for you and your children, a freer lesson plan might be the way forward. Create a list of activities you propose to do with your child, then pick a few ideas from the list each day or week.

However, you choose to plan your lessons, be sure to include activities that cover all areas of learning. Also, review activities a few weeks in advance to give yourself plenty of time to source all of the necessary materials.

5.   Leave time for free play

Another essential for your lesson plan? Free play.

While this may seem like the easy way out for parents and teachers, giving children the time to engage in self-directed play actually has real educational value. Little minds can learn so much from playing and exploring the world around them — especially when they think that no one’s watching!

When kids are left to their own devices, they develop creative and problem-solving skills and become more independent and confident to boot.

These essential skills are much harder to learn when kids have a well-meaning adult hovering at their shoulders.

6.   Don’t plan too far ahead

Where possible, avoid planning the whole school year all at once. The best kind of lesson plan for preschoolers is flexible.

Preschool children develop new interests — sometimes on an almost daily basis! They may take a while to master a particular concept but have another down much quicker than you anticipated.

Working a few weeks or a month in advance is the best practice. That sort of window allows you to make sure all your lessons are relevant and tailored to your student(s).

7.   Don’t let lesson planning for preschool stress you out!

Parents and teachers find their lesson planning stride through trial and error. Only through experiencing classes with your kids do you get to know what works and what doesn’t.

Also bear in mind that there are plenty of ways to create learning opportunities as children play. Building a tower? Count the bricks. Painting? See what happens when you mix different colors. Heading out on a walk? Look out for phonemes on street signs.

Parents and teachers who have a good understanding of their preschool objectives can weave age-appropriate learning into almost any situation. By trusting in your abilities as a teacher and making fun your focus, you’ll be setting your preschooler up to develop in leaps and bounds. 

Looking for quality, downloadable worksheets for your preschooler? Check out the KidsKonnect library, with an amazing range of learning resources suited to every stage of your child’s school journey.