How to plan pedagogical and holistic activities for children?
Advance lesson planning is the first and main step in reducing work hours and securing quality learning. The overall strategy boils down to making decisions about planning early, so the day-to-day work consists of simply implementing the decisions already made.
What is the framework for planning?
First, let's recall the structure and terms that are the basis of quality educational activities:
CURRICULUM = The main guide for educators. The curriculum shows the essential contents for teaching so that every child has opportunities for diverse learning experiences. Educators should use all the areas in their teaching equally. Curriculum = learning areas + learning objectives.
LEARNING AREAS = Guide educators when planning and implementing activities together with the children. Wide entities. Choose the learning area you want to focus on during the specific activity or project.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES = The starting point for creating activities. Choose the learning objectives you want to go for in this specific activity or project. 1-3 learning objectives per activity is enough.
CHILD-CENTERED ACTIVITIES = Children are the starting point and the ultimate reason for creating activities. The activities should be based on children's interests, capabilities, needs, and/or developmental stages.
Why do the activities need a pedagogical base?
Educators are creative, so coming up with activities is not the issue. The issue is:
- Can educators justify the chosen activity pedagogically?
- Why is that activity useful for the children?
- What do the children learn from this?
It is okay to organize nice activities just for fun sometimes. The main focus should anyway be on pedagogically planned activities. It is also important that educators keep in mind to plan activities from all the learning areas of the curriculum - that is what makes teaching and learning holistic and fair for the children.
Know your curriculum & identify the learning goals
Most curriculums such as the National Finnish Curriculum includes learning areas and learning objectives. The areas of learning describe the main goals and content of the pedagogical activities. They guide the staff when planning and implementing diverse and playful pedagogical activities together with the children.
The areas of learning in the Finnish curriculum have been divided into five groups:
The learning areas of the curriculum will help you to structure your teaching, documentation, and assessment. The pedagogical objectives of the curriculum are the starting point for creating specific activities.
Learning objectives in Kindiedays Educator App
When using Kindiedays Portfolio software, all the learning areas and learning objectives are already available. The educators have them on the Kindiedays Educator App always when needed.
When do educators need the learning areas and learning objectives then?
- When educators plan activities, the aim is to plan each activity based on the curriculum and children’s developmental stages and needs. The curriculum with all the learning areas and learning objectives can be found in the Educator App so it makes planning easier, more professional, and goal-oriented.
- While the children are participating in a guided activity, educators tap the learning objectives for marking down which skills and areas of learning developed during the activity.
- The curriculum should be actively in use in early childhood education. If the curriculum stands in a folder in an office, how many staff members are reading it on a daily/weekly/monthly basis? Probably not that many. If the curriculum travels around daily on every educator’s phone, the chances of reading it raise 100%.
Use pedagogical, playful and holistic activities that have a purpose
If early childhood education activities do not have a pedagogical base or a curriculum behind them, they serve no real purpose. If the educator does not think of the reason why she or he is running that activity or lesson, there is actually no point in doing it - in the long run at least.
Educators should focus on activities that:
- Have a reason such as "We paint because children are interested in learning about colors, children need to learn to name them correctly, and they are eager on trying new art techniques."
- Fall in one or more pre-planned learning areas such as "Diverse forms of expression and Diverse world of languages."
- Contain pre-planned learning objectives such as "I learn different art techniques, I take part in planned activities and I learn new vocabulary e.g. names of the colors."
- Support the children’s development such as "Color recognition, hand-eye coordination, language development, and fine motor skills."
- Interest children.
It simply isn’t possible in the real world for every lesson plan to be entirely original to the educator - at least some premade materials are necessary because planning time is limited for all of us. This is where Kindiedays lesson plan packages save time and resources. You can choose between lesson plans organized by Themes or by the Finnish Curriculum and Learning Areas.
Plan with Kindiedays
Planning with Kindiedays - or planning 'solo' without Kindiedays? What is the difference?
1. Advance lesson planning is key
Advance lesson planning is the main step in securing quality learning. Planning pedagogically high-quality and overall holistic lessons is challenging and time-consuming. All educators can come up with nice activities for children – for example, “Let’s take finger paints and paint! That is fun!”. But not every educator can justify why she/he is organizing that activity at this time for these children.
2. Planning with Kindiedays has a quality guarantee
What makes planning with Kindiedays faster, and better in pedagogical quality is that every single one of the activities has a set learning area and set learning objectives predefined.
Kindiedays Lesson Plan Package is designed to guide and support educators to provide lessons and activities based on a curriculum. Each lesson plan is carefully planned to match the learning areas and pedagogical learning objectives outlined in the Finnish National Curriculum. Kindiedays lesson plans can also be used with any other curriculum, as long as playful learning is close to your heart. Kindiedays gives you ready-made lesson plans that last a whole year.
3. Pedagogical documentation
Children's learning should be documented systematically and assessed with the curriculum's learning areas and objectives in mind. With systematic documentation, educators are able to understand what the children have learned, what are their strengths and what are their personal needs for development. Educators can also assess if there are some learning areas that their teaching has not yet covered.
Kindiedays gives educators useful tools for pedagogical documentation and therefore helps educators to maintain high quality in education.
Save resources and costs in the planning process
Below, in the picture, you can see the planning process of how activities or lessons get their pedagogical frame. There is a path with Kindiedays and without:
It is possible to plan, document, assess and improve without digital solutions using pen, glue, paper, scissors, and colored pencils. But Kindiedays makes the whole process more flexible, smooth, and up-to-date. Planning with Kindiedays has less stress and a quality guarantee and it actually is an all-in-one path!
Make an overall plan for the coming months
Once you’ve got a good understanding of the learning areas and learning objectives, divide up the days of the term: How many days can you spend on each area? Make an overall plan for the whole term. This is the only way to make sure you cover everything. Choose the lesson plans that you plan to use. Now you know how many days you have for each learning area, and the activities you might use for each.
A major obstacle to efficient planning at this step is getting hung up on what to prioritize.
Now weekly planning is easy in Kindiedays
From the overall plan, it is now straightforward to create the weekly plan and select the specific lesson plans for the coming week. The weekly plan and the lessons can then be shared with the educators in advance on the Educator App and optionally also with families on the Family App.
Observations and documentation in the learning moments
In playful learning, the educators observe and document the children’s learning. Formative assessment based on authentic observations is used. This must be done fluently in the background and not take away too much time from the children. You need to keep in mind what you want to observe and assess and how that can be done efficiently. With a digital solution like Kindiedays Portfolio, you have the pedagogical targets available in the app, and the observations can be collected efficiently in the learning moments and tagged to the learning areas and pedagogical objectives.
Asssessment for learning
Through systematic planning of activities and observations, educators can collect information for formative assessment of children’s learning. When using Kindiedays, auto-generated child portfolios, and learning reports provide a wealth of information and evidence to support children’s learning and engage families. Portfolios, reports, and statistics all connect to the learning areas and learning objectives of your curriculum.
