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Funding provided by the Government of Ontario.
Our Daily Schedule
Published January 26, 2012 | 
Our daily schedule might be different than most Early Learning Kindergarten classrooms. However, my teaching partner and I have tried different ways of making it work in our room, and for us and our students, this schedule works the best. We do alter it during different seasons, but not greatly. The main way we adjust it is for the weather. In the Fall and Spring, we spend more time outdoors. Our school is in the northern end of Simcoe County, so it can be difficult to get outside as often as we would like to in the winter. Also, we are on a balanced day schedule in our school board. We also try to keep large group instruction times to a minimum and focus on small group instruction so everyone gets more out of the program.
| 9:10am to 9:30am | Entry - gather on carpet, daily graph, review graph |
| 9:30am to 9:50am | Independent Writing |
| 9:50am to 10:40am | Free Play (we also do small group instructions) |
| 10:40am to 10:50pm | Read the week’s short poem. Review sight words |
| 10:50am to 11:30am | Nutrition Break and Recess |
| 11:30am to 12:20pm | Music/Gym/Library (depending on what day it is) |
| 12:20pm to 1:05pm | Literacy activities in small groups and free play |
| 1:05pm to 1:10pm | Handwashing and getting lunches |
| 1:10pm to 1:50pm | Nutrition Break and Recess |
| 1:50pm to 2:05pm | Large group instruction for math |
| 2:05pm to 2:20pm | Math activities that focus on the lesson |
| 2:20pm to 2:30pm | Regroup and review the math activity/lesson |
| 2:30pm to 3:15pm | Free Play (we also do small group instructions again) |
| 3:15pm to 3:30pm | Getting ready for home |
We are an Early Learning Kindergarten classroom, so we have 28 students in our room. We have a Registered Certified Teacher, a Designated Early Childhood Educator, and we are also fortunate to have an Educational Assistant.
When one of us is pulling the students for small group learning, the other one educator is circulating the room and interacting with the other children to extend their learning, especially while they are playing. It is also a great time for observation and assessment with the students.
Thank you for posting this! I am the only K teacher in my school so it is nice to see how other teachers structure their days. My schedule looks very similar to yours except that, sadly, my school does not schedule specialist teachers at the same time each day. May I ask how many teachers (and kids) you have in your classroom? During free choice, when you are pulling kids to work in small groups, do you also have someone else circulating to extend children’s learning at the centers?
Thank you
The large blocks of time allow for a more “relaxed flow of the day”. It is more of a seamless day, with fewer transitions for the children. It is also easier to pull small groups for instruction during large blocks of time. The children know that even though they are doing a small group activity with the teacher, they still have lots of play time.
I like how you have large blocks of time for free play slotted in. I’m confused about the idea of a timetable with exact times slotted in when I’ve been reading and hearing so much about a more relaxed “flow of the day”.