Learning never happens in a straight, predictable line. 

How many of your days run exactly as planned? If your days are like many of ours with young children, being flexible is key to a successful learning experience. You can still plan and be flexible! Learn how to use the curriculum tools and still be flexible.

A Web of Activities

By planning a web of activities rather than a minute-by-minute schedule, you can maintain a daily goal for what you would like to teach while staying open to the creative unknown of the day.

For this reason, Experience Preschool Curriculum offers a variety of activities that embed skills into natural play.

How you weave these variety of games, art projects and activities into your day should be based on the needs and attention span of your children. Whether homeschooling your child or teaching in a classroom, establishing a daily routine that works for you and your children will help your year flow smoothly. Establishing this routine can take time and patience.  

Experience Early Learning provides recommendations on how to establish a routine and when may be a good time to use certain activities within your day; however, follow the needs and interests of your children.

Having a plan guides you when you feel lost in your day. But if your children are thriving and excited to learn about a new topic or dig deeper into one you just introduced – go for it! 

Experience Curriculum is all about setting the stage for meaningful experiences. We have designed the program intentionally to flex with your day.

Is Experience Curriculum Flexible?

While the curriculum comes in a box, learning takes place beyond the box. Some materials are precut for your convenience. We provide journals and letter pages for emergent writing skill development, but no daily worksheets. Our puzzles, math manipulatives, books, magnets, storytelling puppets and art tools encourage hands on learning. 

Educators can introduce and use the curriculum in their own unique way. Go ahead, put your own spin on it and make it work for you! Pick and choose activities, expand as desired or customize the lesson plans, following your children’s lead. Our STEAM Station ideas and resources provide opportunities for hands on free play exploration and discovery. Experience Curriculum for Toddlers and Preschoolers focuses play and process because we know learning happens through the process.

Using the Theme Web in Experience Preschool

The Theme Web is a graphic organizer to brainstorm the many topics you could explore related back to a big idea or theme. This is how Experience Curriculum organizes a monthly theme of topics into lesson plans.

The theme web helps you, your children and their parents see how the month’s theme is organized. The monthly theme is in the middle circle. The weekly “big ideas” are in the four surrounding circles. The daily discovery topics branch out from the weekly “big idea” circles. If desired, add more investigation topics according to the interests of your children.

Display your theme web in a place where children and families can reference it throughout the month. The theme web is also on the back of the Preschool Family Newsletter each month.

Flexible Days for Toddlers

The Experience Toddler curriculum is also flexible, with four planned daily activities. The Toddler Teacher Guides feature Cut & Play cards for flexible lesson planning. Because the activities for each week are developed around the story book of the week, they coordinate regardless of which order the activities are presented in. Mix and match one of each color to create your own lesson plans that offer a balance of skill development and still meet the daily needs of each toddler.

While we want to have most of our day and lessons planned, things happen. We do not want to throw our students or ourselves completely off if there needs to be a change. Plan for some down time with options of activities that can be completed if there is extra time. This can also be used as a makeup time for fire drills, birthdays, or any other activity that takes up valuable learning time. Planning for flexibility will make everyone’s day better!

Want to learn about following the child’s lead and making the most of teachable moments?  Register for Teachable Moments training and earn CED hours. Find more professional development for Early Childhood Educators and Directors on ExperienceTraining.org