How to plan your Activity Time with your toddler or preschooler

Let me go ahead and answer one question I've heard a lot lately: 

How do you plan your activities?

It's taken some time, but I've found a good system that works for me and my kids. Even still, it changes. Some weeks we rock it and do lots of great activities and some weeks I check out and our Letter of the Week turns into Letter of the Month. I've accepted that. My goal is to have some solid one-on-one time with my kids once a day, and it has to happen in the morning. I try at least once a week, sometimes twice, to have an activity planned here at home where we study our Letter of the Week/Month and do a coinciding craft, read books, or a learning game. On the other days, we visit the library, our local children's museum, or (now that's it's spring) head to the park. 

Time spent together with no distractions = Activity Time.   

So here's my method:

Every Tuesday, we hit up the local library and attend their awesome Discovery Time. They even provide worksheets with all the finger plays and songs they teach each week so I can take it home and file it away for another day. Love the library. Then we head to the computers where my girls can hold their own (mostly) while Edison and I search around for books. I usually have a few topics in mind and watch for books that support my ideas for the current letter of the week. I also have great librarians! I usually pull some children's fiction, a fairy tale, a science topic (body parts, astronomy, etc.), and one or two animal biographies.

Then we base our activities around the topics I found at the library. So for the letter K, my book list might look something like this:

Plant a Kiss by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

(I'm a huge Rosenthal fan)
This book goes perfectly with our lipstick-kissed "K" activity above.

Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? By Eric Carle

You could create a game of pretending to be kangaroos and make these cute kangaroo pouches.

Welcome to the World of Kangaroos

My library has a more toned down series of animal biographies that I love.

Curious George Flies a Kite

With this you could make paper kites to fly outside.

The King's Wish

For a fun snack, make King's "crowns" with apple halves and toothpicks with
mini marshmallows, craisins, and cut up cheese)

I always start our activity time with a review of the date, weather, the alphabet and sometimes one of our favorite songs or finger plays. Then we read our books followed up with a game or craft and of course, a snack. 

That's it! The goal of course is to be present. My best activities are not those that took the most preparation or thought, but rather the ones where we really connect and play together. Planning for an activity time almost every day, helps me to create those moments more often.