So we have tweaked our Tot School schedule a bit. If you missed our re-boot post you can check it out here. We have made some big changes to our Tot School routine! After completing 30 weeks of Tot School, our girl was ready for more, and this Mama has a bit more planning to do so I thought I’d give an updated look at how I plan our weeks out now. You can still find version one of our Tot School schedule here.

I still plan by a theme, and the theme I’m using to show how we schedule now is our Fall theme. Instead of working on a theme every week, most of our themes will generally last for two weeks now. In addition to having a theme, we also have calendar time, lots of singing, and a Focus Board with a Letter, Color, Shape, and Number of the week. Everything on our Focus Board is incorporated somehow into our themed weeks. I also try to have a least one fine motor activity, gross motor activity, open ended activity, music activity, and art activity represented throughout our themed weeks. For example…our Leaf Toss & Collect activity meets our gross motor skills goal, our music goal was met with our theme songs, our sensory bin is open ended as Grace can choose how she wants to play with the items in the bin, we painted circle pumpkins for our art activity, and picking up and placing leaves on our contact “F” tree worked on our fine motor skills. Our first week doing this was for our Fall Theme and below you can see how I plan it all out. You can check out exactly how we did each activity below by checking out our Tot School / Weeks 31-32: Fall 🍃🍁🍂 post.

I always start by writing out our activities in our new Everyday a Little Grace Week Planner (pictured above), then decide what is actually doable and take stock of supplies we may need. Based on what we already have on hand may determine how I actually set up an activity. We try our best to use what we already have at our disposal. I go through our book collection first to see if we have an appropriate book to go with our theme, and if we don’t I check our local library first, and if I still don’t have any luck I order from Amazon. I chose to order a book to go with two we already had for our Fall theme as the ones we had weren’t specifically fall, so I Love Fall tied them all together.

The second page of our new Everyday a Little Grace Week Planner is where I jot down notes, compile a list of supplies and after we complete our weeks there’s a place to reflect on what we accomplished and to celebrate the time we spent together.

Supplies For Our Fall Themed Weeks:

• Books of the Week: I Love Fall by Alison Inches, Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin by Tad Hills, and One Leaf, Two Leaves by John Micklos Jr. and Clive McFarland
• YouTube Videos: Story Bots’ Seasons, Story Bots’ Circles, Story Bots’ The Number One, Story Bots’ The Letter F, & Pancake Manor’s Orange
• Theme Songs (Find those graphics on the Tot School / Weeks 31-32: Fall 🍃🍁🍂 post.)
• Fall Window Clings
• Fall Items (For Sensory Bin)
• Small Storage Bin
• Easter Grass
• Free Shapes Printable, Laminated and Cut Out
• White Card Stock (or other paper)
• Orange & Green Paint
• Empty Toilet Paper Roll
• Fake Leaves
• Basket or other Container
• Contact Paper

Because we have been doing Tot School for over 30 weeks now, most of the supplies needed for this theme I already had stashed in our Tot School cabinet. The only items I purchased for our Fall theme was the Window Clings, Fake Leaves, and a few of the items in our sensory bin which all came from Dollar Tree, as well as one of our books for the week: I Love Fall ($5 on Amazon). Instead of contact paper you could totally just use tape or sticky tack to place the Leaves in a “F” shape on a wall, window, or door. I just had a roll of contact paper from previous Tot School weeks, so I used what I had on hand. My Dad also happens to have a laminator which we used to laminate the the free pumpkin shapes printable we found on Pinterest, but you really don’t have to laminate that activity, but it’s nice for durability’s sake and we can use this activity again in the future now.

Do we always follow our plan? No! Sometimes we vary an activity based on Grace’s ability or let’s be honest here…her mood! And sometimes Mama isn’t feeling it either! We even fly by the seat of our pants some days. We’ve done multiple activities in a one day before, and other times we simply run out of time to do an activity planned for that day. Our constants though are our books of the week that we read everyday and as of recently our songs (we’ve totally sung our songs in the car while running errands many times)! Coming from a Mama that gets a little too anxious sometimes, if you stress out too much over Tot School your child will too. This should be fun not only for your child but for you as well. I love having this intentional time with Grace and enjoy the planning, but I do also try my best to pick out activities that don’t take up too much of my time to prep and I try to keep them budget friendly as well…looking at you Dollar Tree!

So that’s our updated version of our Tot School Schedule! Happy planning Y’all!

Subscribe to the Blog!

Subscribe today and recieve a free copy of our Everyday a Little Grace Week Planner, in addition to 10% off all items in our Etsy Shop!

You can see a list of our 2020 Tot School Themes 🐝 here.

Interested in purchasing plans or printables for your at home Tot School / Preschool ? Visit our Etsy Shop 🛍 today!

You can still see our original Tot School Schedule by visiting the Tot School Schedule 🍍 v1.0 page.

You can also see a list of last year’s themes on the 2019 Tot School Themes ☂️ page.

You can find all our daily songs, their tunes and lyrics by visiting our Tot School Songs 🎵 page.

Want even more resources for Tot School? Check out our Tot School Resources Page 📚 for some of our favorites!

EVERYDAY a little Grace 🌷