Design activities for ECD Programmes
Lesson overview
In this chapter you will learn the following:
- Identify activities for your ECD programme
- Design of daily programmes
- Design weekly and long term programmes
- Types of activities that address the needs of the children
- Design of the activities
As a child caregiver, you will need to know how to design activities to meet the developmental needs of the babies, toddlers and young children in your care. You have to be able to define the purpose of activities in terms of their contribution to achieving the developmental outcomes of the child.
The activities you design should provide scope for progression through the developmental stages and address their particular developmental needs and abilities.
Thought!
Let’s recap on the developmental stages:
- Infant: Birth to 1 year
- Toddler: 1-3 years
- Pre-schooler: 3-6 years
- School age child: 6-12 years
- Adolescent: 12-18 years
Activity
Revision exercise:
write a few notes on the developmental milestones for infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
It is important for you to have a daily programme for the children. This will ensure routine and schedules and will also give you the opportunity to provide structured feedback to the parents on activities and progress within a daily programme.
Below are examples of 3 different daily programmes:
- Daily programme for babies
| 07:00 – 08:30 | Arrival, talk to parents, breakfast |
| 08:30 – 09:30 | Individual activities, pampering |
| 09:30 – 10:00 | Nappies and feeding |
| 10:00 – 11:00 | Individual time – outdoors if possible |
| 11:00 – 12:00 | Nappies, lunch |
| 12:00 – 14:00 | Nap or individual time |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Nappies, feeding |
| 14:30 – 16:30 | Individual activities, pampering |
| 16:30 – 17:30 | Nappies, get ready for home time, pack bags, complete message books |
Notes:
- Babies are in need of attention and lots of pampering
- Plans for babies are very individual. Each baby has their own routine, such as sleeping, eating times, nappy changes
- When you give individual attention, it will be in the form of toys, cuddles, stories, crawling, massages etc.
- Daily programme for toddlers
| 07:00 – 08:30 | Arrival, talk to parents |
| 08:30 – 09:30 | Breakfast and toileting (nappy changes where applicable) |
| 09:30 – 10:30 | Free play indoors |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Tidy-up time and snack time/toilet time |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Outdoor free play |
| 11:30 – 12:00 | Lunch |
| 12:30 – 13:00 | Story telling |
| 13:00 – 13:30 | Wake up/toilet/snack time |
| 13:30 – 14:30 | Outdoor free play |
| 14:30 – 16:00 | Indoor structured activities |
| 16:00 – 16:15 | Tidy up time |
| 16:15 – 16:30 | Toilet and wash |
| 16:30 – 17:00 | Snack time |
| 17:00 – 17:30 | Departure time and discussions with parents |
Notes:
- Toddlers need a variety of play experiences
- They need lots of language input in the form of rhymes, songs and stories
- Remember they may still have individual sleep needs/times as well as individual attention
- Daily programme for preschoolers
Activity
Let’s work in our groups and design a daily programme for preschoolers.
Notes:
- Keep in mind that young children need lots of variety and time for individual as well as group activities.
It is a good idea to plan your activities around weekly themes such as seasons, transport, families, insects, the sea, animals, sports, holidays etc.
It is a good idea to plan your activities around weekly themes. Many childcare centres have weekly themes and have certain activities on certain days, such as ‘Bake Fridays’.
Themes help you to focus your learning objectives and encourage integrated learning. They create context and result in meaningful interaction.
Your activities are usually linked to a certain theme. Here are some ideas for themes:
- Seasons
- Transport
- Families
- Insects
- The sea
- Wild Animals
- Pets
Thought!
THEME Example:
You have chosen the theme for the week as Families. Here is how you would structure your activities.
Draw a picture of your family
Read a story relating to a family
Use dolls or soft toys to reenact family dynamics
Long term planning is also important so that themes can run in a logical sequence and so that you can take outings and major events into account. These can be used to change your classroom and to provide activities that stimulate further interest and learning.
Now that you have planned your programme in line with the developmental stage of the babies, toddlers and preschoolers, you should identify the types of activities that will address those needs.
Let’s refer back to our developmental milestones from Lesson 2
Let’s have a look at some examples of activities that will address each of the above areas of development:
| Activities for Gross Motor Skills | These are activities that will allow children to crawl, climb, balance, swing, run, skip etc.Obstacle courseWalking Hopscotch |
| Activities for Fine Motor Skills | Children need to strengthen fine motor skills by learning how to maintain small objects and use tools. Playing with beadsJigsaw puzzlesArtUse of tools include pencils, crayons, scissors etc. |
| Activities for Cognitive development | These activities should encourage children to practice reasoning, thinking and problem-solving and help them to create ideas:Matching gamesMemory gamesPatterns |
| Activities for language development | Every learning activity you facilitate will have a communication component. Eg. children need to listen to follow instructions. They need to talk, they may even sing.Musical activitiesStorytellingIdentify a sound |
| Social and emotional development | Children tend to become increasingly social and independent as they grow and develop. However, it is not always easy for children to make the change from being self-focused, and interacting mainly with parents and caregivers, to becoming group-focused and interacting with peers in healthy ways. It is critical for children to learn to socialise and interact with their peers. It is important for you to incorporate GROUP activities to enable children to work with others in a group and interact on that level. |
As a child caregiver, it is important to know how to design activities to meet the developmental needs of the children in your care. These activities should make provision for progression through developmental stages.
Let’s look at a few aspects to help you with this.
- Design should make provision for CHILD INPUT
Your activities should create the opportunity for the child’s input when appropriate. The child should be actively involved in the content, resources and process of the activity.
There is an old chinese proverb that says:
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Children learn best when they are actively involved in an activity rather than being passive recipients or on-lookers.
How do we provide opportunities for child input in activities?
- Children telling their own stories:
Encourage children to make up stories or tell familiar stories and write down their own stories.
- Children making their own resources:
Children can contribute to the resources needed for an activity by making their own resources. This is a practical way to provide for child input in an activity.
Can you think of an example?
Giving children this opportunity will give them a sense of pride and ownership, it will encourage self esteem, help them to learn to complete new tasks and draw on their own ideas and creativity.
- Define the PURPOSE OF THE ACTIVITIES
Before you design an activity to use in your group, you need to define the purpose of the activity. You need to answer the following questions:
- Why the activity?
- What is the activity?
- What is the purpose of the activity?
- Which developmental needs/milestones am I targeting with this activity?
- Ensure activities are FREE FROM BIAS
The activities you design must be bias-free. It may not reinforce biased ideas about different people in the world around us. Forms of bias include:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Stereotypes
Your activities should celebrate diversity.
- Activities should be STIMULATING, CHALLENGING, INTERESTING AND LINKED TO REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES
A stimulating activity is one that engages children in actively learning through what they are doing. You need to encourage and motivate them to be involved. Focus on activities for babies that include their senses for example.
Challenging activities stretches children to progress to the next stage of development in terms of difficulty or complexity. The activities you design should not be too easy or too difficult for their developmental stage. Challenging, but not too difficult!
- Activities should ENCOURAGE INTERACTION.
Children should be encouraged to interact with you, with each other, and with the learning resources. Use stories, songs, rhymes and physical activities to encourage interaction.
Activity
You are required to design an activity in your groups that meet the criteria of the above section of this lesson.
Thought!
YOUR PLAYROOM MUST BE DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE!
In this lesson you have learnt the following:
- As a child caregiver, you will need to know how to design activities to meet the developmental needs of the babies, toddlers and young children in your care. You have to be able to define the purpose of activities in terms of their contribution to achieving the developmental outcomes of the child
- The activities you design should provide scope for progression through the developmental stages and address their particular developmental needs and abilities
- When designing activities, they should:
- Make provision for child input
- Have a purpose
- Be free from bias
- Stimulate, challenge, be interesting and linked to real life experiences
- Encourage interaction