Organisation is one of our greatest passions here at //celebrateplay// HQ, so it would come as no surprise to you that we have a planner for most aspects of our lives – daily schedule, meals, laundry, cleaning and more recently play – that is right, a planner to organise our play.
WHY? When asked earlier this year to choose one word to describe our goals for 2017 – we chose the word INTENTION!! So, with this is mind, combined with our greatest passions of organisation and play came the notion of a planner to organise play to help us create our play experiences with more intention.
Today we are sharing more details about our Play Planner in a short FAQ’s blog.
1. What is a play planner?
A play planner is what we use to schedule and record the play activities we aim to complete during the week. Initially our play planner was a planner on its own, however, very recently we have included it with our daily schedule, so all the information is in the one planner for easy and quick reference.
2. When do you find the time to fill in the Play plan?
Every Sunday is planning day in our house and part of that includes a scheduled time (not at the same time each week) to fill in our planners.
3. Do you complete all planned play activities?
Most weeks, yes, as I tend to only plan for what I think we can achieve based on our daily schedule and other commitments. Some weeks, no, due to unforeseen circumstances eg. Family member is sick, visitors, birthday parties, other celebrations etc. We tend to complete a wider range of play activities by using play based learning stations (PBLS) as several activities are set up simultaneously and with the children rotating they tend to spend more time focused on playing, less time in transition and therefore complete more.
4. How and why did you choose focus areas?
I choose our activities based on focus areas. Ours are Literacy, Numeracy, Creative, Science, Outdoor and Social as they met the needs of my children and lend themselves to a variety of skills and topics. In the initial planner, I had this information in a table. In the new planner, this information is no longer recorded but it is mentally noted.
5. Will you change focus areas and how do you know when it is time to change the focus areas?
Yes, I plan to change one focus area (Science) and rotate it with History and Geography once we have achieved all we can in Science.
6.How do you keep the plans together? As I mentioned they were in two planners and Iv recently merged the two planners into the one. We use an arch lever folder, paper with hole puched holes and a daily template.
7. Where do you keep the planner? The planner is stored in the top shelf of cube storage along with my other planners in our common area.
8. What do you include in the play planner?
The planner so far includes pages with:
•Monthly inspirational quotes on the topic of “play”
•Monthly goal setting
•Play idea template with PBLS, Toy Rotation, Blog ideas, Goals, Shopping List and Self Care
•Inventory list
•Resource shopping list
•Self reflection
•Gift ideas
Does anyone else love planners? If so what do you use them for?
