Showing posts with label Themes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Themes. Show all posts

Friday, August 22, 2025

Weekly Planning - Week 1 - All About Me

 I love themes! I believe they help us stay on track and incorporate fun and diversity in our Club experience. This school year I have revamped our daily schedule to be a group effort between our YDPs and our Unit Director at our Riverview Club (where we serve 1st - 3rd grade kiddos). 

Our theme for Week One is All About Me. This gives the opportunity for Club members to get to know each other and reconnect with old friends.



Day One is a group activity where each member creates their own puzzle piece and we can use these to create a wall display featuring the members of each group. You can find this project on Scholastic Teachables.



Day Two is part of the Healthy Habits program. We have created at pre/post test survey for use with grant monitoring. If you would like a copy of this to use with your site, just send me an email at jwood@bgcottawacounty.org.



Day Three is a Career Interest Survey that is part of our adapted Career Launch program. Since the national program is designed for older kids, we have adapted and created a program that fits with the age of Club members we serve. The survey that we use was created by College Foundation of North Carolina and is designed for elementary age kiddos. If you would like to use the same survey, you can find it here.

Day Four is a project from the Youth for Unity program. We use this program along with Smart Moves for social / emotional learning. 

Day Five is an adaptation of a project I have used during my days as a preschool teacher. I have found the easiest way to do this is to pair kids and have them work together tracing each other. If you have minimal space, you might opt to have members create a self portrait on regular size paper instead.

So, that's our first week in a nutshell. I'll be sharing our weekly program guides with our themes here as we go in case you want to adventure along with us.

Friday, July 25, 2025

Weekly Theme Plans - Quarter One

When preparing for a new school year, the task of planning can seem especially daunting. To help that not feel quite so large, we have a weekly theme that helps when planning.

Quarter One Weekly Plans

Week 1 - All About Me

Week 2 - Dinosaurs

Week 3 - Taking Flight

Week 4  - Volcanoes

Week 5 - Club Community

Week 6 - Community Helpers

Week 7 - Arg Me Hardies

Week 8 - Celebrating Hispanic Heritage

Week 9 - Whimsical Wonderland

These are not complete plans, but they do include the major programs for each week - Smart Moves, Healthy Habits, Career Launch, and Project Learn. A Unit Director will take these one page weekly plans and complete their daily planner filling in with other activities including Triple Play, Art, STEM, and Games.



Friday, March 28, 2025

April Monthly Themes

 In what now feels like another lifetime, I was a preschool teacher. Each week we would have a new theme that I built our lessons around. It was fun and it gave a fresh look to our classroom. Weekly themes can easily be incorporated into your after school programs as well. I use a lot of Magic Tree House and the Magic School Bus when I plan our weekly themes. Our Book Buddies group reads the Magic Tree House books (our goal is to complete one book a month) and we use the Magic School Bus as a kick off for the science aspects of some of our Project Learn lessons. 



Week 1 Robin Life Cycles (featuring our returning pair Bertram and Bonnie and their nest)

Week 2 Plants & Photosynthesis
    - Magic School Bus Gets Planted Season 3, Episode 10


Week 3 Easter & Eggs

Week 4 Medieval Times & Castles
    - Magic Tree House #2 The Knight at Dawn 


Week 5 Frogs & Friends


We have a two-year rotation on our themes and revamp the projects that go with them when we revisit them to keep the projects fresh and fun. Our facility works with grades 1-3 so it's unlikely that kids will have repeat activities while they're with us. We do have some consistent themes (like our Robin life cycle celebrating the mating pair that has returned to our Club to make their nest for the last five years) but we will find different activities to pair with those themes to keep kids excited and engaged.



Spotlight on August

 Hello Friends!      Summer Program is in the books and we’ve circled back around to preparing for After School Program. August gives the op...