Are you at a school where you need to create your own daily schedule? After my first 3 years teaching, I was at a new school that did not give me a minute by minute schedule for the day. I was used to having exact times for not only lunch and specials, but for Phonics, ELA centers, Math, even Brain Breaks! Instead this new school gave me the times for lunch, specials and recess, and I was on my own to create the rest of my schedule! Being only 1 of 2 teachers (and the next year the only teacher!) I needed to create my own daily schedule for the first time. Hereβs how to create a daily schedule for Kindergarten.Β
Step 1: Fill in Mandatory Schedule
Once I was given the school schedule, I grabbed a pen and paper and started writing everything down. Hopefully you have everything at the same time every day to make things easier. My specials would change daily, so I had to create 5 separate daily schedules, which was such a headache!
The first thing you will want to do is to write in your set schedule. Write down the time your students start coming in, then what time your students leave in the afternoon. Then, fill in lunch and recess times, along with specials or any other mandatory schedule items. (One school we had a school-wide assembly every Monday morning so I added that in)
Step 2: Determine how much time you have for instruction
It's always surprising for how little time there is for actual instruction. I take all the blank space that's left and add it up to see how much instruction time there is for each day. Don't worry yet about adding in transition times and brain breaks, we will do that later.
Step 3: Decide how much time you want for each subject
The next important step is to look at how much time you want to set aside for each subject. Your ELA and Math block are probably going to the most time consuming, and you want to remember to add in centers to those too. Typically, this is how much time I allotted for each subject area-
β’ELA Block (Phonics, Reading, Writing, and Reading Centers)- 2 hours
β’Math Block (Math and Math Centers)- 1 1/2 hours
β’Social Studies and Science- 45 minutes-1 hour
Don't forget about Calendar, Morning Meeting, and any other mini subjects you want to add in to create your daily schedule for Kindergarten.
Step 3: Look at time blocks and move subjects around
Now you need to decide where subjects will go. My personal preference is to do the entire ELA block in the morning and then Math and Science and Social Studies in the afternoon. Check out a sample daily Kindergarten schedule here!
I use pencil for this part and write out each part of my day in increments of 15. So if I want an hour for reading centers, I find an hour of uninterrupted time and mark it there. I move things around quite a bit until it fits nicely and makes sense.
Step 4: Finalize your schedule
Once everything looked good, I type up the schedule using PowerPoint, print it, and then hang it up. I also made sure to print a copy for my send home packet for Meet the Teacher for the parents.
A Few Important Things to Remember
Itβs important to have about 5 minutes in your head as βtransition timesβ. So if you want a full hour for ELA centers, add an extra 5 minutes to the end to transition to your next subject or just account for the difference when creating the schedule.
You'll also need some time to walk to specials, lunch, recess, etc. Scheduling in some “flex times” will also help finish any work/lessons that your students were not able to. For example, in this sample schedule- I added in some flex time after specials for students to finish any center work, have a Brain Break, or sometimes just read a story or have free play centers.
Adding in brain breaks throughout the day is a must for Kindergarten students. 7 hours is the average day for a full day Kindergarten program and that is a long time for 5-6 year olds. About every hour, I would do a brain break lasting about 5 minutes. My go-to brain break activities were Go Noodle or Cosmic Kids Yoga.Β I never wrote these in my actual schedule. I just would do it between subjects and accounted for transition times.
I hope you learned some tips on how to create a daily schedule for Kindergarten! Make sure to check out my post sharing what a sample Kindergarten daily schedule looks like here! You can also find my Teacher Organization and Planning packet here for lots of editable templates for teachers to use.
