PHQP 0021 Your Daily Schedule’s Too Cluttered: Jeff critiques overly busy early learning program schedules, arguing they disrupt children’s need for big blocks of uninterrupted, self-directed play and exploration. He highlights how frequent transitions create friction and behavior issues, offering practical advice to simplify schedules while meeting regulatory requirements.

Watch Now: PHQP_0021 Your Daily Schedule’s Too Cluttered

Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for tuning in on With the Show.

So on the PlayvolutionHQ site, I’m working on a section of classic kids games. And one of the games I’m doing a write-up on is the game of horse. And it’s a ball and basket based game.

Many of you have probably played it or seen it played. And anyway, in researching this, I found video online of some dudes, adult dudes, playing a version of this game that involves shock collars. Each one of them had a dog training collar on.

I mean, I’ve got these types of collars for both of my big dogs. And I pretty much use the vibrate and beep settings, not the shock settings. But I mean, I’ve probably shocked myself more than I’ve shocked my dogs.

But anyway, all these guys have these collars on. And if you miss the shot, then the button got pushed and you got a shock. Because one of the things about games is games have consequences.

And these guys kind of raise the stakes and the consequences for their game of horse. And I found it amusing, a very dude thing. I think I’m going to use a video in the article as a variation people can look at, but maybe not a recommendation.

So look for that coming sometime in the future. On with the show, topic one, our only topic for this week, the daily schedule. Your daily schedule is too cluttered.

Now that’s kind of a blanket statement. I haven’t seen your daily schedule probably. I’m talking about your program’s daily schedule.

And I’m making the assumption that it’s too cluttered, but it probably is. If yours isn’t, I’d love to see it. If yours is, I’d love to see it too.

I love looking at these things. And basically where I’m coming from here is the idea that I’ve espoused from the beginning of the show is that young children need big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration. And if they’re in programs with daily schedules that are broken down into little blocks of time that aren’t self-directed and aren’t full of play and exploration, we are doing kids a disservice.

So your schedule is probably working counter to what you want to do if what you want to do is what I’ve got up on the slide there. Big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration. And so one place where caregivers who want to have more playful environments struggle is with their daily schedules.

Because a lot of times stuff gets shoved into the schedule. Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. Early learning program schedules tend towards tiny blocks of time.

And that’s just a fact. I’ve been looking at these things for 30 years now. I’ve got a collection of 120-plus handbooks I’ve collected over the last couple years that most of them have schedules in them.

And I’ve got a couple here I’ll show you in a second. They are open to close of a program full of busyness. And it doesn’t lead to big blocks of uninterrupted time for child-led play and exploration.

Here’s one. I don’t know what kind of device you’re watching this on, but this is a real one I collected. 8.15 in the morning, circle time, 8.15 to 8.30, day per change, 8.30 to 9, snack, 9 to 9.30, outside, 9.30 to 10, math, exploration, 10 to 10, 10.45, art, 10.45 to 11.15, language.

And on and on it goes until 5.30 to 6.30, preparing to go home. And see, that’s quite a lot. That’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 transitions in the course of a day.

Another one. Again, this is a real program schedule. This is an afternoon preschool program.

You arrive at 12.15, you’re dismissed at 3.45, and I counted these earlier, 10 transitions during the course of that day. Most of them broken down into 15 minute or half hour or maybe 45 minute blocks of time. Not a lot of time for kids to engage in big blocks of uninterrupted, self-directed play.

There’s one more here. This one, again, a daily preschool for three-year-olds, 6.45, they open, 6 o’clock is the end of the day. And again, there’s a good dozen transitions in here.

None of these have big blocks of time for uninterrupted play and exploration, that is child selected and led. And again, we’re losing out if we don’t have that. So, let’s get into the problems with these complicated, busy, cluttered schedules.

One, those transition times create friction. The hardest parts of the day in most programs, most of the time, is pick up and drop off time. And then every time there’s a transition during the day.

Because at those times, we’re going from doing one thing and having one mindset to doing another thing and having another mindset. And that requires a lot of emotional regulation and self-control that a lot of little people haven’t mastered yet. And so, when you’re asking the kid who is finally getting focused on their dramatic play to stop and clean up, and then go someplace else and do something else that they may or may not want to do, you’re looking for friction, you’re looking for an emotional meltdown, you’re looking for upheaval.

And so, a lot of the head-butting, a lot of the friction, a lot of the problems in our days as caregivers happen during those transitions. So, one of the benefits of moving towards bigger blocks of time for self-directed child-led play and exploration is you have fewer of those transitions and then you have less of that friction. So, our day becomes easier.

Fewer transition times equal fewer behavior problems. I mean, I’ve experienced it myself as a caregiver in the programs that I’ve operated, but I’ve heard it over and over and over again. Programs that make this switch notice this drop in behavior problems, this drop in child meltdowns, this drop in outbursts.

Because when you get to keep doing the thing that you chose to do until you’re done doing it, and then you get to choose and go do something else, there’s less of that friction. And look, one of the pushbacks I’ll hear from this is, but Jeff, in school they have to. And the response to that is they’re not in school yet.

They’re not school age yet. Just because we’re going to expect them to do something when they’re older doesn’t mean we need to push it on them now. Because the fact is the schools should be offering kids bigger blocks of time for self-directed play and exploration as well in the early elementary years.

So, just because some other program they’re going to be in in the future that uses bad practice does something doesn’t mean we should be doing that in the early learning world. There are a lot of kids that are going to grow up and drive, but that doesn’t mean we give them the keys to the F-150 when they’re three and a half years old. So, we don’t need to push.

We don’t need to do that rushing. Another thing is schedules often look that deal to keep them happy. Whoever your them is, maybe it’s licensing, maybe it’s the state quality rating people, maybe it’s the Eckers person, maybe it’s the accreditation people.

But look, that one that had, okay, we’ve got math here and we’ve got language here and all that stuff. But the thing is, kids are learning math in their play and exploration. They’re learning language in their play and exploration.

But it’s easy for programs just to write that stuff down on the schedule and then that person comes in to do their observation to see if they’re going to get accredited or how many stars they’re going to get and they see it on the schedule. They see that those things are being done and that box gets checked. But simpler schedules can check all those boxes.

You can write a schedule that offers big blocks of uninterrupted time for child-led, self-directed play that checks all the boxes. And look, if you need help with that, send me a PDF of your current schedule and send me PDFs of where the guidelines are, the boxes you need to check, and I’ll come up with a version of a schedule that offers bigger blocks of time and meets all those requirements that checks them off that they want to see. So we can do this.

It takes some work. It takes some playing with language. But if your schedule is all cluttered and it’s all broken up because you feel it has to be that way to keep them happy, it can provide bigger blocks of time and still keep them happy.

Another thing is, oh, we got to wrap up a little bit quicker. And so just pulling back a little bit and looking at that schedule and saying, is this really how we want to spend our day? One of the other things about young kids is they need predictable routines more than they need predictable schedules. So the routine is we have morning snack.

Kids probably don’t care if snack is at exactly 9.45 every morning. The when can be kind of slippery. Kids, it needs to be predictable if they wash their hands before they have a meal and after they have a meal.

But when that meal occurs, it can be a little bit flexible. The fact that there’s meals during the day is the predictability they need, is the routine they need. But it doesn’t have to be the exact same time every day.

We can have that flexibility. The other thing about going to schedules that require big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration is that you’re better meeting the kids’ needs. Because they’re able to go off and do their thing and lead their own learning, which is what I think this show has been focusing on for a long time.

So think about your schedules. Think about whether or not you could remove a transition time or two and make things more flexible. Now look, you don’t have to do a whole work over of your whole day.

Maybe start weeding out one transition time at a time until you’ve created a couple big blocks of time for play. You can tiptoe into it. You don’t have to do a big change.

In fact, that might be the best way to do it. Instead of revamping the entire schedule and flipping everybody on their head, which is going to, until you settle in to that new schedule, it’s going to be confusing and hard. Maybe start making slow transitions.

Combine two blocks of time and build another bigger play session. So instead of half an hour for play, you’ve got an hour. And see how that goes for a couple weeks and then maybe get rid of another transition.

It’s worth tinkering around with. Wrap up, send me your classroom schedule. I am a nerd.

I love collecting these things. And if I’m wrong and your schedule isn’t too cluttered, I’d love to see how you made that work. And if you have a very detailed schedule and you love it, send it to me and let me know why you love it.

And I promise I won’t give you a hard time about it. Just because I think these schedules are not necessarily beneficial to kids, I do understand why they exist and why adults maybe prefer them sometimes. Because we as adults kind of need, want that structure and predictability and routine maybe more than the kids do.

But anyway, I love collecting these things. I would love to see them if you’re willing and generous enough to share with me. Amazon idea for this month.

Somebody used my Amazon portal to buy these cute little forks. They also got some cute little matching spoons, sets of 16. I like the kind of, they’re colorful, but it’s kind of a muted color.

I kind of dig that. And look, listeners, here’s the thing. You go through my Amazon portal and you do your Amazon shopping.

And just a tiny percentage of what you spend comes to me to support the Playvolution HQ website and this podcast. And you don’t pay any more because of this. You pay the same as you would have by entering the Amazon site from a different portal.

It’s just that it gives me a little bit of support and that’s much appreciated. What’s also appreciated is you sharing things that you like, whether it’s this podcast or things you find on the Playvolution HQ site. And look, if there’s something you really like that’s early learning related and you want to share it with me, be it an article or a book or an idea, my contact information is in the show notes.

So you can share those things as well. Next week, next week, we’re going to get into reliability and validity testing. This has to do with quality rating systems and accreditation programs and those kind of things.

I’ve got I’ve got some thoughts. Dead joke of the week. We’ll wrap things up.

What did one ocean say to the other ocean? Nothing. They just waved. This this here has been the Playvolution HQ podcast.

I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you sharing the show if you like it. Back soon with an episode.

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