Home Daycare Lesson Plans
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Are you searching for home daycare lesson plans that work for a variety of ages without spending a fortune? You’re in the right place! These free lesson plan ideas are simple, budget-friendly, and designed specifically for running a home daycare to keep kids learning, engaged, and ready for school.
Why Lesson Plans Are Important in Home Daycare
Running a home daycare comes with unique challenges. Unlike preschools with single-age classrooms, you may be teaching infants, toddlers, and preschoolers at the same time. That doesn’t mean you can’t provide fun learning activities that build school readiness skills.
Lesson plans for daycare should include:
- Fine and gross motor skill activities
- Messy and non-messy play options
- Sensory activities for all ages
- Games that build cooperation and problem-solving
- Early literacy, math, and science experiences
With a little creativity, you can make play-based lesson plans that balance child-led exploration with structured learning.
If you need some quick ideas that you can prep in 5 minutes or less, check out these home daycare activities. You will find many activities that are geared for home daycare providers with limited budgets and space, and no helpers. There are still so many fun things you can find to do with your kids.
Lesson plans for home daycare are not impossible to figure out. Click on the highlighted link to find out how to easily plan out your days with your kids. And get these lesson plans done and posted on your parent board for parents to see. You got this!
Lesson plans should help kids develop fine and gross motor skills, have messy and non-messy choices, include games, and stimulate children’s sensory development as well.
Home Daycare Curriculum Goals
A well-rounded daycare curriculum promotes:
- Social skills and cooperation
- Creativity and critical thinking
- Language and literacy development
- Math and science exploration
- Music and arts appreciation
When you plan activities with these goals in mind, you’ll give children the strong foundation they need for kindergarten and beyond.
Get ready for lots of learning and fun with these lesson plans, including themed units and special activity days that reinforce different subjects you can teach about. Some activities require a little bit of setup, but all are easy enough that I have done them with my home daycare students.
These are fun, play-based activities that can be used with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
Check out these 5 minute games for daycare to add to your lesson plans! And don’t forget to check out these printable activities.
Free Lesson Plan Ideas by Age
Infant lesson plans
- Summer fun water party ideas will help you throw a super fun water party for any age child.
- Check out over 30 garden activities for kids of all ages.
- Even young infants will enjoy a circus party in your home daycare.
Toddler lesson plans
- Science activities for toddlers and preschoolers will give you ideas to use with kids in different subjects of science.
- Polar animal activities for kids can be used with any age and teaches about the unique qualities of animals that can survive in severe cold.
- Learning with these daycare lesson plans on bees gives you tons of ideas for honey, honeycomb, life cycle of bees and more.
Enrichment activities for home daycare
- You can also throw a camping party for kids to teach them all kinds of fun skills and it goes right along with Huck Finn.
- Throwing kids an educational shark party is not only fun but super full of education for kids about an animal that is super interesting and special. You could also make these mermaid bookmarks to go with it.
- The all about me dance party article gives you tons of ideas to celebrate the uniqueness of each child. Similarities and differences are an important part of learning self-awareness.
- Use these ideas to throw a really fun dinosaur party for your home daycare kids.
- What about a terrific teddy bear picnic? All ages of home daycare kids will love that.
- Or fun elf on the shelf ideas!
- Don’t forget fine arts and enrichment with these Daycare Lesson Plans on Shakespeare.
Daycare Lesson Plans on Classic Literature
- Studying classic literature through the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a great way to teach kids as well.
- Another classic literature piece you can study with your daycare is The Secret Garden. Lots of fun things to do with that theme.
- Learning about kindness and creativity is a snap when you use Daycare Lesson Plans on “Anne of Green Gables” with your kids.
- Or study the weather with these Daycare Lesson Plans on Wuthering Heights.
Daycare Lesson Plans on Fine Arts
- For more fine arts ideas you can study Frida Kahlo in this daycare lesson plan.
- Enrichment activities such as these daycare lesson plans on Picasso are a lot of fun. You can teach art as well as enrich children’s learning about culture and Picasso’s works.
- This Daycare Lesson Plans on Henri Matisse post shows how you can study fine arts in sculpture, painting, and collage for kid’s enrichment.
- Daycare Lesson Plans on Andy Warhol for pop art inspiration.
- These art enrichment Daycare Lesson Plans on Jackson Pollock are lots of fun!
- These Daycare Lesson Plans on Louise Bourgeois are tons of fun! And her life and style was so interesting. A giant spider is a great inspiration!
Daycare Lesson Plans on Children’s Books
- Choose a favorite children’s book and do Daycare Lesson Plans on “The Very Busy Spider” or another great story.
- Another favorite is the book we read to our daughter every night before bed when she was a child. Daycare Lesson Plans on “Goodnight Moon”
- Another childhood favorite is Pete the Cat! Check out these Daycare Lesson Plans on “Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons” and discover the chill vibe of Pete!
- Dr. Suess day is a super fun one to celebrate with home daycare lesson plan ideas.
- These Daycare Lesson Plans on “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” are colorful and fun, and study life cycles too! There’s so much you can do with this story.
- This Daycare Lesson Plans on “Where the Wild Things Are” pack is full of monster fun and lots of social emotional learning.
- These Daycare Lesson Plans on “The Little Engine That Could” teach kids about perseverance and are full of lots of train fun!
Daycare Lesson Plans on Different Heritages
- Studying different cultures with kids will help them understand different practices, games, foods, and more. This lesson plan on Korean culture is super fun and full of interesting things to learn.
- Or this Daycare Lesson Plans on Native American Culture unit for studying traditional practices.
- You can also do a fun Daycare Lesson Plans on Irish Culture unit and teach the kids all about traditional Irish heritage.
- To learn more enrichment about French culture, these Daycare Lesson Plans on French Culture are full of food, games, and fun.
- If you want to study the German heritage with your kids, check out these Daycare Lesson Plans on German Culture with lots of interesting things to engage them.
Preschool Lesson Plans
- Fall activities for preschool will give you lots of ideas for exploring leaves, apples, and pumpkins. And these Daycare Lesson Plans on Fall as well!
- Also check out these Daycare Lesson Plans on Apples for more focused ideas on just apples.
- Gardening and plant theme for preschool will teach kids about life cycles, botany, and more.
- The pumpkin preschool theme will teach kids about different ways to explore pumpkins.
- Dental health theme for preschool is a fun way to help teach kids oral hygiene and get them excited about brushing their teeth.
- Caterpillar and butterfly theme will teach kids about metamorphosis and more. And the butterfly life cycle theme will teach them as well.
- The summer fun theme for preschool will give you tons of great ideas to use in summer.
- A winter daycare lesson plan is a great way to teach kids about snow and ice weather as well.
- Or for Christmas time, check out these Daycare Lesson Plans on Gingerbread for inspiration!
- Special holidays such as valentine’s day are a great way to teach about friendship.
- Consider throwing a zoo party to teach kids all about animals.
- One of the most fun days we have is every four years when we do a summer Olympics theme. It’s great for teaching patriotism, determination, and much more.
We have super fun art parties at Little Sprouts and the kids love buffing up their creativity.
In addition to these themes, check out the blog for tons of recipes to cook with kids and other great activities. Check out this recipe for dandelion jelly that kids would love to make. There are different kinds of activities such as:
- painting activities
- gardening with kids
- composting
- building a terrarium
- ladybug facts
- praying mantis facts for kids
There is so much to do with your home daycare on this blog!
I’ve been doing home daycare for over 25 years and I still love it every day. My theory is you should keep them busy or they will keep you busy, so I do just that in my home daycare. I love letting kids have free play and we do a lot of that. We are generally play-based.
I also think that parents appreciate the special activities you do with kids and the kids do enjoy it. So I try to make a balanced mix of teacher-led and child-led activities so they can get the best of both worlds.
It’s helped me be successful all these years in my business, but the best part of all is having parents come back and tell me that the teacher raved about all the things the kids that leave here know. That’s the true sign of success for me. My kids are confident, prepared, and ready to learn.
If you are interested in premade lesson plans for other themes, check these out at Daycare Time Solutions. They have great monthly themed lesson plans AND other great products to help you with your home daycare.
