Last updated 26/03/2023
Creating a year plan for your childminding setting gives you a chance to visualise your whole year at once. Once you’ve made a year plan, you can refer to it whenever you plan your months, weeks and days and use it as a guide. The purpose of writing a plan is to help you think about your ‘intent’ and answer the basic question: what would you like to DO with the children you look after this year and when would be a good time to do it?
Start with a one page blank year calendar
Print or buy a small blank calendar that shows all 12 months on it, preferably all on one page so you can see your whole year at a glance. The most important thing about a year plan is not to add too many details. If you put too many items on it or too much detail, then you will lose sight of the ‘big picture’ and what you are trying to accomplish in the year.
First add events that are fixed in time including:
Half terms and school holidays: Whether you look after school age children or not, it is useful to record the school terms on your year calendar so that you know when to avoid busy local attractions (like your local petting farm) with your under fives.
Your own holidays: Many childminders try to plan their holidays for the year in advance. I think this is very useful for parents if you can give them as much notice as possible about when you will be away. It helps them regarding planning for their work. But also, there are many childminders who forget to take holidays, or become too busy for them. If they are planned into your calendar for the year then they will be little beacons of hope to look forward to. And you will definitely remember to take off the time you are owed.
Fixed events and themes that you celebrate every year: Most childminders make cards for Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day. Most childminders also will send home cards and little homemade crafts at Christmas. As well as those days, many childminders send home crafts and have special celebrations at Easter, Valentines Day, Halloween and Bonfire Night for example. Add these days to your calendar so that you don’t forget them and can plan ideas ahead of time.
Add in any special events with fixed dates that you plan to celebrate this year: If you plan to celebrate the children’s birthdays, add these dates to the calendar. If a child is leaving, add their last day. Don’t forget to add your own birthday to the calendar. Grown ups have birthdays that should be celebrated too and any excuse for a little party at your setting is a good one!
2 Year Checks and Transition Reports: If you have any children who will turn two this year, you will need to make time to do their two year check. For many childminders this involves some observation over a few weeks, a meeting with parents and some paperwork. So it is worth marking it on the calendar so you can mentally see it coming. Also remember that children who are leaving for nursery or school may need transition reports prepared. So if you are planning to make those, then you need to plan time for them so the paperwork doesn’t take you by surprise.
Add in any other fixed time events or activities you want to do: If you plan to plant sunflowers or grow potatoes you have to do this at fixed times in the year. Make sure you plan gardening events, for example, into your calendar so you don’t forget.
Look at your calendar – it may already look quite full
After you have added the events that are fixed in time, some months of your year planning calendar may already be looking quite full. Suppose, you have a progress check due in October and you also plan to make lots of little crafts to celebrate Halloween and have a little party for the children, and it is also a birthday that month, then you can see at a glance that October is going to be VERY BUSY and you will probably not want to schedule in any more events for October.
Brainstorm other ideas you want to try
After you have added in the fixed time events, you can now add in some of the other ideas you want to try this year. This is the fun, creative stuff, the day trips and themes you want to try. Write them in pencil or on post-it notes so you can move these activities around until you find a good spot for them.
Schedule special day trips
Add in any special day trips you plan to do. Suppose you take a yearly trip to the petting farm. You might want to take it during the Easter holidays so that the school aged children can come too? Suppose you also want to plan a trip to the ‘model village’? That one is really just a trip for the under fives but it’s outdoors, so you will want to go while the weather is still warmish, so September would be a good time for this trip.
Plan in some multicultural holidays and diversity awareness activities
Add the dates of a couple of multicultural holidays you plan to celebrate this year. Diwali is one that lots of people do, but if you know you are going to be very busy in October this year, then it might not be a good one to choose this year. Perhaps it is a better year to plan to celebrate Chinese New Year as you can see from your calendar that you are not busy in February? You can’t celebrate ALL of the holidays EVERY year. Prioritise some that are relevant to the children in your setting. Here is a free printable calendar of events you might want to choose from?
Choose some themes or topics to explore this year
Choose a few themes and topics you want to explore over the year and write them in months where you don’t have too much already planned. For example, here are three themes you might choose to explore and how you might choose to schedule them. Again, use pencil or post it notes with these topics:
Road safety: this would be a good topic to do at a time when the school children are around too, so you might choose to schedule it for the Easter holidays.
Mini Beasts: this is a topic you primarily want to do with the under fives, but it would be nice to schedule the trip to the Butterfly House during half term so that the school age children can come too.
Families: Exploring and learning about families and each other’s families is a theme you really just want to do just with the under fives. It isn’t weather-dependent, and so Nov would be a good time to fit that in.
Exploring themes is flexible. Don’t try to do too many, or you won’t do them. The point of the year plan is that if, for example, you can see that you are going on holiday for most of August then this is not the month to plan your mini beast project. And if you want to be able to concentrate while you work with the youngest children exploring each other’s families, then you don’t want the school children there as they’ll be noisy and in the way!
A year plan is a disciplined way of thinking about the activities you do
Having a good long term plan will help you to stay organised. Good plans also ensure that you are providing a balanced and varied curriculum with a variety of experiences for the children you look after, and that you have the resources you need to offer the experiences you have planned. Planning is fun and it can be relaxing to see a whole year spread out neatly in front of you. It also encourages you to try things you may not do otherwise.
Why not give it a try?
Helpful Kids To Go Resources
Childminding Best Practice Club
Would you like a pack of themed activities emailed to you each month to help you try new things?
Sometimes planning themes can be a bit overwhelming because there are simply so many ideas out there to choose from. Childminding Best Practice Club members receive a monthly toolkit containing a special themed section. This contains printable templates and some simple art projects adaptable to children of different ages. Some of the themes are ‘time sensitive’ – cards for Mothers Day, Bonfire Night activities etc. Other themes like ‘space’ or ‘wheels on the bus,’ can be done whenever they fit into your year plan.
Join the Childminding Best Practice Club for just £2.50 each month to receive monthly themed packs emailed to your inbox.
Progress Check Pack
The Kids To Go Progress Check Pack is handy kit which guides you through the whole process. It has been fully updated to fit in with the new EYFS standards and to bring the format into line with new Summative Assessment Kit which it complements. It contains progress check samples, templates and full guidance on how to complete your progress check at age two.
Super Summative Assessment and Gap Tracker Pack
This kit contains all the tools you need to sum up a child’s development and achievements, right from when a child starts with you, all the way until they leave to go to nursery or school. From ‘All about Me’ forms, starting points, transition and report templates as well as sample reports, tips and of course a gap tracker for when you need it.
About Kids To Go
Kids To Go was established in 2008. Products include the Ultimate Childminding Checklist, best practice resources promoting diversity, safety and childminding in the great outdoors (Forest Childcare). It is the home of the Childminding Best Practice Club and the free weekly Childminding Best Practice newsletters.
Some things are better handwritten. Some things are better handmade like homemade baking is always better than store bought. Sometimes, a book with glued in pictures, while less tidy than an online app, is simply “nicer”. Many parents like to imagine choosing a childminder for their child in a dreamy, slowing down, biscuit crumbs and soft edges, sunny days pushing children on swings sort of way. Paper-based learning journeys smell of warmth and friendliness and fit better with this image. It is a good image because nurseries cannot recreate it, however many ‘key people’ they attempt to assign to a child or home corners they install!
Do parents really want to spend their time logging on to some horrible, cumbersome online system to find out how their child is developing? Can they really be bothered? For those of you who do online learning journeys, how many parents ever really look at what you put in them? Do they bother to log on and check on their child’s development? Some parents will, but others might be much more likely to engage with the work you are doing and take more of an interest in their child’s development if you were to hand them a nice album with a few photos of their child in it and some simple observations you have written (or typed out) next to it.
