- Identify why predictable schedules and routines are important for children.
- Define responsive schedules and routines.
- Recognize the ways consistent but flexible schedules and routines support learning and development.
Learn
Know
Predictable Schedules and Routines
Schedules and routines are important for children and adults. We all like to know what our day will be like—when to do laundry, when to pick up a child at play practice, etc. Routines help us feel in control of our schedules. They also keep us from having to rethink everything every day, which can be very tiring.
Think about a time when you were traveling and a friend or a tour guide was in charge of your day. Did you feel like you gave up control over your schedule? Were you anxious about when meals would occur or when you would be arriving at your hotel? As an adult, you have a concept of time, can ask questions, and can try to gain some understanding of what your day will entail. Even when someone else is organizing your day, you can exert some control over what happens to you.
Young children (infants, toddlers, and preschoolers) do not have a clear understanding of time. They organize themselves by the people they are with and the events that occur. School-age children typically know how to tell time and can estimate how long an activity will last. They like to feel more in control of their own time, activity choices, and schedule.
A Responsive Schedule for Infants and Toddlers
Infants and toddlers should be viewed as capable and competent. Each child is unique in personality, needs, and responsiveness. If you are caring for infants and toddlers, you will need to be flexible. For example, some infants take shorter naps throughout the day and others may take one or two longer naps. As a caregiver, you will observe the infants and toddlers in your care and respond to their needs. As you communicate with the families of infants and toddlers in your care, you will learn more about their schedules and routines and about the families’ preferences.
An infant or toddler’s schedule is guided and supported by a responsive primary caregiver based on what is learned through observations and connections with the family. The primary caregiver strives to understand the child’s needs and helps each individual transition from one experience to another. You can support autonomy by providing “wait time” for each infant or toddler so that they can process information and make connections (Wurm, 2005). When caring for infants and toddlers, adults should focus on the sequence of their care and how things happen rather than keeping to a strict time schedule. Daily schedules for infants and toddlers include:
- Experiences: Caregivers should remain close by to offer support to infants and toddlers as they play and explore the environment at their own pace.
- Caregiving routines: Arrival, feeding or eating, diapering or toileting, sleeping, departure, etc.
- Transitions: Times of change that occur in a child’s day, such as snack or outdoor play.
Flexibility is key to caring for infants and toddlers. As a family child care provider, you will need to adapt and change as you learn about each child. Schedule changes, travel, and other events of daily life may affect a child’s day in your home. As a responsive caregiver, you will need to remain flexible and put the child’s needs first.
Schedule for a Family Child Care Setting
Predictable schedules help provide a framework and direction for providers when caring for children. In turn, children feel safe, secure and confident when schedules and routines are dependable; this tells them that they can trust caregivers to provide for their needs. It also supports families by helping them to know what activities are happening in the program and when they are occurring. Creating a consistent daily schedule, will allow you to build routines that support the varying ages of the children in your family child care home..
The daily schedule in your family child care home might include elements such as:
- Arrival Time/Greet Families
- Mealtimes
- Free Choice
- Outdoor Time
- Diapering and toileting
- Small Group Time
- Naptime
- Departure Time
Below you will find an example of a daily schedule for a family child care setting from the Creative Curriculum (2009).
Daily Schedule Example
Arrival time:
Children arrive at different times, and you may be getting your own children ready for the bus or school.
- Plan something interesting for children to do independently (books, story tapes, music, and table toys work well). Some child care providers have special “hello” boxes or toys that children use at arrival.
- Encourage children to begin choice time as soon as they clean up their place at the breakfast table.
- Use arrival as a learning time: Have a check-in sheet with each child’s name so they learn to recognize their names in print.
- Make sure school-age children have everything they need to start their day at school.
Group times:
At different times of the day, you may want to gather all the children together for a group time. Group time should be interactive and engaging. You may read a story, sing songs, and do finger plays, engage in conversations with children, or introduce new materials.
- Plan ahead for group times. Know what you want to accomplish and have any needed materials ready (putting them on a nearby tray is a good organizational tool).
- Keep large-group times short. They may be very short (especially if you care for toddlers and young 3-year-olds). The group times may go longer as the children mature. Take your cues from their interest and enthusiasm.
Choice time:
This is the time when children choose what they want to do, what to play with, and whom to be with. Choice time is typically for one hour per day and is when much learning takes place. While children are engaged, you should talk with them, make responsive comments (narrate), engage in play, ask open-ended questions, and extend their learning.
- Plan choice time. By observing and listening to the children, you will learn what interests they have. Plan experiences that extend children’s interests and help them develop in the areas of dramatic play, math, literacy, science, social studies, technology, and the arts.
- Help children learn to make choices. Interact with children by talking with them.
- Allow enough time. Meaningful learning cannot be rushed. A longer choice time allows children to engage in learning.
- Add new props and materials as children’s interests change. Remember to rotate materials monthly.
Cleanup time.
Cleaning up can be a challenge. Use these strategies to make clean up go smoothly:
- Handle cleanup playfully. Use a song, music, or a game to help children clean up.
- Remember that cleaning up is a learning experience for children.
- Give children a warning. Let them know in a few minutes they will have to stop and clean up.
- Label the environment so children know where materials belong.
- Remind children to clean up as they finish using materials.
- Help children understand that cleaning up is everyone’s job. We are a community, and everyone helps.
Going outdoors.
Children will need time to get ready to go outside. They should use the toilet, wash their hands, have diapers changed, put on coats, etc. When outdoors, children play in the yard or you go to a nearby playground.
- Store outer clothing near the door.
- Encourage older children to assist younger children.
- Have extra hats, scarves, gloves, and mittens.
- Minimize wait time. Sing songs and do finger plays as you help children dress to go outside.
Transition indoors and have a read-aloud time.
Children come inside, use the bathroom, have a diaper check or change, and wash hands. Children participate actively in a read-aloud time. They can then look at books or do other quiet activities as you prepare lunch.
Lunch.
Involve children with setting the table and serving food. Bring infants’ high chairs to the table so they can be part of the social experience. Eat with the children family style. Children assist with clean-up after lunch.
Naptime and afternoon snack.
Children transition to nap and rest time.
- As children wake up, they use the bathroom and wash hands.
- Infants’ diapers are checked and changed.
- Children eat snacks. School-age children arrive and help themselves to a snack.
- Everyone cleans up snacks and chooses an afternoon activity.
Afternoon choice time and outdoor play.
This is a time for active indoor and outdoor play for all children, including school-age. This is also a good time to offer a special project for school-age children.
Transition and afternoon meeting.
- Children either clean up from choice time or transition back indoors.
- Have a short group time to talk about the day and make plans for tomorrow, read a story, sing songs.
End of day.
Children go home at different times. They are engaged in quiet activities (books, table toys, stories on CD) until their families arrive.
Adapted from Dodge, Rudick, & Colker, 2009, Creative curriculum for family child care, pp.43-51
It is important to display a word and picture schedule at the children’s level, so they know what activity time comes next in their day. It is also important to plan ahead and use information about the children’s interests in order to plan activities for your week. Provide parents with the weekly plan ahead of time. If you have a website, you may want to post it there and have a paper copy posted on a bulletin board in the arrival area of your home.
Children should know the schedule, what is expected of them, and what is coming up next. There are many methods of creating and maintaining schedules. Though routines are essential within your family child care setting, they should be flexible and remain open to the needs of the children.
Transitions
Transitions are unavoidable in group care. There are times during the day when children must stop one activity and start another, for example, cleaning up activity areas and putting on coats to go outside. Transitions are often a difficult part of children’s day, and child engagement can be low during this time. Even though some transitions are necessary, caregivers can do their best to minimize transitions and keep children engaged. Both preventive and individualized strategies can help create smooth transitions.
To minimize transitions, consider all of the activities in your day that require all children to do the same thing at the same time. First, ask yourself: Are all of these transition times necessary? For example, the importance of small-group time was mentioned above. However, this does not mean that small-group time needs to be a separate block of time in the preschool day. Instead, you could make children’s free-choice time longer and include small-group activities as choices within the free-choice time period. That would allow you to eliminate the transition between free-choice time and small-group time.
Next, ask yourself: Do all of the children need to do the same thing at the same time during transitions? For example, do all the children need a diaper change or to use the restroom at the same time or can this happen on an individual basis.
You can also consider whether some children can transition on their own. For snack time, you could decrease the number of whole-group transitions by offering “open snack.” Here, caregivers simply prepare the snack table and offer it as a choice where children come and go from this space as they are ready. Sometimes, an adult sits at the table to assist. Open snack can not only decrease transitions but can help teach children to be aware of the signs of hunger or thirst within their own bodies and gives them greater control over meeting those needs.
There are also other ways to keep children positively engaged during transitions. Like adults, children appreciate knowing ahead of time when a change is coming. Before the end of an activity, it may be helpful to give children a “5-minute warning” when there are 5 minutes left before it is time to clean up. You can use child-friendly tools like a timer to help children know when the transition will occur. Singing songs with accompanying movements (e.g., hand clapping) during transitions such as clean up or handwashing may help keep children focused on what they are doing and prevent long waiting times in which children have nothing to do. Finally, make sure to have materials such as books, puzzles, and puppets available for children who are waiting to begin the next activity.
Consistent but Flexible
Caring for children is challenging, and the best-formed schedule, plans, and ideas may have to change at a moment’s notice. Keeping a consistent schedule is important for children’s growth and development. Routines not only help children feel secure and safe, they also help families know what their child is doing at your home during the day. However, it is important to maintain a balance between consistency and flexibility. Sometimes, children find it more fun to be outdoors, and you can certainly bring many indoor activities outdoors. When caring for infants and toddlers, there is the need to respond to their very individualized schedules. Taking time to talk to an infant during diaper changes and feedings is important and should not be hurried to meet a scheduled activity. You support children’s growth and development by listening and not rushing a child who is talking to you about a new discovery they have made during play. The adult-child relationship is at the heart of quality care and should come before all else.
See
Watch this video for ideas about how to develop a daily schedule and routines for your family child care that are consistent and flexible to meet the needs of the various age groups in your care.
Your Daily Schedule
Do
In this lesson, you learned about responsive caregiving and its importance to the growth and development of infants and toddlers. You examined a sample family child care schedule and learned about strategies for transitions across daily routines. Having weekly plans and a daily schedule will keep you organized and provide children with a stable, secure, caring environment. There will always be changes and unexpected events, so remaining flexible about your program’s schedule will go a long way toward comfortably handling the main day-to-day decisions you make as a family child care provider. Within your schedule, you have freedom to design activities, interactions and materials that meet the individual needs of the children in your care. Consider some of the following tips as you design your schedule:
- Provide at least 60 minutes of outdoor time each day.
- Keep large-and small-group times short and developmentally appropriate.
- Provide free choice time each day where children can choose activities based on their interests.
- Provide warnings before transitions. Giving auditory and visual cues that you are about to transition to another activity can make transition times easier.
- Post pictures or photos of the daily schedule and steps in daily routines.
- Incorporate music and movement into daily routines and transitions.
- Provide predictable routines to help children know what to expect and what happens next.
- Be flexible in your routines and schedule to fit with each child’s needs. If a routine is not working, rethink it. (For example, if it’s the first nice day in a while, spend a few extra minutes outdoors)
Explore
Reflect on your daily schedule (or one you want to create). Many child care providers indicate that transitions between scheduled activities can be difficult for children. What transitions might be difficult for some of the children in your care? Read the information in, Helping Young Children Transition Between Activities and decide if any of the strategies may be helpful as you implement the daily schedule in your family child care home.
Apply
In addition to planning a daily schedule, it is important to make a weekly plan and share it with the families of the children in your program. The Weekly Planning Form attachment is one example of a schedule format you may use. Review and ask for feedback about your Weekly Planning Form with your trainer, coach, or family child care administrator.
Glossary
Demonstrate
Armstrong, L. J. (2012). Family child care homes: Creative spaces for children to learn. Redleaf Press.
Broderick, J. T, & Hong, S. B. (2020) From children’s interests to children’s thinking: Using a cycle of inquiry to plan curriculum. National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Dodge, D. T., Rudick, S., & Colker, L. J. (2009). The creative curriculum for family child care (2nd ed.). Teaching Strategies, Inc.
Greenman, J., Stonehouse, A., & Schweikert, G. (2007). Prime times: A handbook for excellence in infant and toddler programs (2nd ed.). Redleaf Press.
Ostrosky, M. M., Jung, E. Y., & Hemmeter, M. L. (2004). Helping children make transitions between activities; What works briefs 4. Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning. http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/briefs/wwb4.pdf
Wurm, J. (2005). Working in the Reggio way: A beginner’s guide for American teachers. Redleaf Press.