Daycare schedules for 2 year olds: How to create daily schedules for your childcare classrooms

Daily Daycare Schedules for Infants and Toddlers

Creating and adhering to a consistent daycare schedule is essential to running a successful child care center. This is important for both staff and children for four key reasons. First, these schedules ensure the necessary staff is available to provide group supervision and individualized care. They also establish daily routines for infants and toddlers, and help to build trust between each child and their caregiver. Finally, consistent daycare schedules make it easier to clearly monitor and encourage child development.

The Importance of a Consistent Daycare Schedule for Infants and Toddlers

From a staffing perspective, having a consistent daycare schedule in place ensures that each team member understands what resources will be required for the day. It’s essential to know which activities are planned for each age group, how much supervision is required, and if any children require individualized care. This will ensure there are enough staff members to meet required child-to-staff ratios, and provide quality care.

Aside from simplifying operations from an administrative perspective, following a daycare schedule is necessary to establish order in children’s lives. Parents and caregivers should establish this regularity as early on as possible. These routines remove unknowns from children’s daily lives that cause undue stress. A reliable daycare schedule helps to regulate behavior, as children know what to expect at each part of the day. This understanding and consistency makes kids more confident and bold in pursuing their interests. Schedules also help children build an understanding of patterns.

Furthermore, being provided for regularly will build an essential trust between the child and their caregiver. Following routines ensures that children know their caregiver will be there to address any needs that arise. This knowledge fosters stability and builds the comfort level the child feels toward their environment.

Finally, a regular daycare schedule makes it easier to encourage and monitor each child’s development in critical areas, namely: emotional, social, language, cognitive, physical, and motor skill development. A defined schedule helps instructors incorporate activities and exercises to foster this early development. Instructors can then coordinate with student’s parents for the best course of action based upon their developmental progress.

With these benefits in mind, we’ve built out some examples of daily daycare schedules for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, to help daycare owners build quality programs.

Infant Daycare Schedule

Infants are typically categorized as newborns to one year old. A little more flexibility is needed within infant daycare scheduling, as it will largely be based around their biological schedule of when they need to eat and sleep.

Example Infant Daycare Schedule

Toddler Daycare Schedule

Toddlers typically range from ages one to three years old. As toddlers may be new to daycare environments, it is a good idea to encourage parents to incorporate some of this routine into their kid’s daily lives at home as well. This will establish normalcy and make sure their kids do not feel overwhelmed by the change in routine.

Example Toddler Daycare Schedule

Preschooler Daily Schedule

Preschool aged children typically range from three to five years old. As you get to know your preschoolers’ interests and personalities better, it is a good idea to plan some activities or projects that encourage and stimulate kid’s individual interests.

Example Preschool Daily Schedule

Simplifying Daycare Schedules for Infants and Toddlers

When it comes to running a daycare center, consistency is key. Having an established schedule that addresses major developmental goals, even if the specific activities vary day-to-day, allows for the highest quality care. Also, having a consistent routine allows instructors to monitor each child’s progress, and coordinate with parents on daily care plans.

Procare’s Family Data solution assists daycare providers on a daily basis, acting as a central hub for important student information, and student and teacher scheduling. Within Family Data, instructors can monitor each students schedule, ensure proper student-to teacher ratios, and account for any individualized attention a student requires within their day.

Additionally, by incorporating classroom management and family engagement, parents and caregivers can communicate with each other directly every day to give daily reports on daycare activities and schedules, as well as to share pictures, and more.

Final Thoughts

Having a daily routine can foster comfort, trust, and confidence in infants, toddlers and preschoolers. By building out daily, age appropriate schedules, daycare providers not only simplify their administrative and staffing tasks, they also ensure happy, healthy children, and engaged parents.

Looking for more information on how to simplify your daily daycare schedules? See how Procare can help.

My Perfect Schedule for 2-Year-Olds

What is a good schedule for a 2-year-old?

Inside this post I’ll share our ideal toddler schedule! Toddlers love consistency and routine.

Setting up a schedule can help your days go smoother and feel more successful.

RELATED: Need simple activity plans for your toddler? I’ve got you covered with a whole year of calendars and activity plans!

We have been talking about toddler schedules over in our Toddler Approved Positive Parenting Zone. Today I’m going to share my “perfect” schedule for 2-year-olds with you. I’d love to hear yours too!

As an elementary school teacher I thrived on having a detailed daily schedule to structure our day. When I became a first time mom the schedule went out the window for awhile as I tried to figure out how to balance life and where to put things. My first child was a terrible sleeper, so often our mornings between 8-11am were where he got his best sleep… which meant that I never left the house til later in the day… if at all.

When my second and third kids came along for the most part our schedule had to stay consistent. Kids had school or scheduled events and a new baby got to just come along for the ride.

As my kids entered toddlerhood we typically started getting more sleep at night (although sometimes we didn’t) which meant we woke up earlier and got a more organized start to our day. I finally began to start having a more consistent schedule again and I loved it!

I’ve discovered that I am a much happier person when we have some sort of routine to our day and so are my kids!

The schedule I am sharing today would be my ideal schedule to keep most days… though it is usually interrupted with emergency trips to the doctor or last minute errands or school pick ups or whatnot.

This is NOT what actually happens in our day every day. I WISH it could though. 

When we have regular days without anything crazy going on then this is the schedule I aim for! Below is my schedule. I’ll explain in more detail what each activity is underneath the schedule. We don’t do every activity on every line. The “::” sign indicates the options I pick between during that time frame. My preschooler goes to preschool some mornings and joins us for activities some mornings too. I also have a first grader who is at school all day and joins for activities in the late afternoon.

My Perfect 2-Year-Old Schedule

7am- Wake up

Though, in my perfect world the kids would sleep in until 8! 🙂 I am grateful that they at least sleep til 7am (typically).

7:00-9:00am 

Eat breakfast :: get dressed :: make lunches :: pack bags

Sensory play :: creative art time :: free play time (I clean up breakfast/put laundry in)

My first grader goes to school late morning so we are lucky to have extra time in the morning together. After we drop him off we usually go on an adventure. Somedays I am in the car doing drop offs from 8am-9:30am and none of these activities happen!

10:00am- 

Park trip :: nature walk/workout :: toddler playgroup/book club :: learning activities :: run errands

I host a toddler book club once a month in my home and a weekly park day for moms at local parks. I also host a preschool co-op some weeks. As you can see, our days vary a lot between 10am-12pm. We don’t do all of these activities, just one or two. Sometimes we’ll run a quick errand and also go to the park. On toddler book club or playgroup days we just do that between 10-12 and errands wait till the kids are in bed and my husband is home. A nature walk could be around our neighborhood or we might go hiking in the open space near our home. Often I will push my two younger kids (ages 4 & 2) in the double jogger and we’ll run to the park, play, and come home so that I can get a workout in.

12:00pm- Lunch & stories

I love reading books to the kids while they eat lunch! This week we are loving books by Eric Carle.

1:00pm- Naptime or quiet time (I work during this time or catch up on emails)

My toddler typically naps for 2 hours every day while my preschooler plays mostly quietly in her room (with occasional interruptions). Sometimes we skip naptime and go on an adventure instead!

3:00pm- Playtime outside

4:00pm- 

Snack and more outdoor play :: free indoor play or creative art time (if raining)

5:00pm- Independent play time (I work on dinner/putting laundry away or other stuff around the house)

The kids sometimes play games or do some of our favorite simple toddler play activities.

5:30pm- Dinner (might be later depending on what I am making)

6:00pm- 

Playtime/games together :: stories :: bath :: creative art time :: clean rooms

My kids don’t get a bath every day and sometimes we scrap this entire schedule and just watch a movie after dinner. We do try and do something creative and something together every night, in addition to cleaning.

7:00pm- Get ready for bed & stories

7:15pm- Bedtime (for my toddler, big kids go to bed at 8pm)

Now that I have shared my “perfect” schedule with you I’m going to explain what sort of activities I fit into the different sections.

Sensory play

Sensory play can mean a whole lot of things. At my house I prefer to keep it really simple. The sensory play activities usually involve touch. Here are our main sensory play activities plus I linked a few favorites below…

• playdough (we probably pull this out 3xs a day)
• sensory bins (we do these a few times a month, not tons)
• water or ice play 
• painting
• sticky walls

I also have an entire pinterest board with cool sensory play ideas for kids that I pull from sometimes.

Creative Art Time

During this time we typically do open ended art activities. These are more like invitations to play and create. I especially love using stickers and dot markers during this time because they are easy materials to pull out. Here are some favorite simple creative art activities…

• simple collages (cut a favorite shape out of paper and start creating!)
• sticker art
• wreath making (easily adapted for different themes/seasons)
• stamping

Learning Activities

With toddlers I will do simple learning activities that explore colors, shapes, numbers, and alphabet letters in a playful way. We only do these a few times a week. We also work on visual discrimination and fine/gross motor movement. These activities aren’t very structured and often involve matching, moving, science activities, or hunting. Here are some simple learning activities that my toddler loves. ..

• alphabet heart matching (adapt using any shape)
• alphabet cookie cutter science
• matching objects (this is fun to do with shoes too)
• matching photos
• color mixing
• sort and drop with LEGO
• color wheel hunt
• shape movement game

Free Play Time

Kids typically just play in their rooms or in our playroom or sometimes in the backyard. This is unstructured and I just encourage them to find something to do. Sometimes they will pull out playdough or art supplies, but usually they are doing pretend play, playing with trains and cars, or playing with DUPLO.

Toddler Book Club

Our toddler book club features a new children’s book each month. I shared a bit about the organization for our Mommy and Me Toddler Book Club here. We have 7 children attend each month between the ages of 18 months and age 3 along with their moms. We do simple crafts, read a book, play games, do sensory activities, have a snack, and play.

Playgroup is just when we get together with a few kids and moms and it is less structured/organized. The moms chat and the kids play.

Clean Rooms

I use a variety of strategies to get all of my kids involved in cleaning and chores at our house. I try and have my kids clean their bedrooms and the playroom (actually our living room) every day. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.

3 Ways to get kids to clean up with less frustration

Quick clean up tip

Family Cleaning Game

Chore sticks

Scratch off chore card

Now that I’ve shared my schedule, I’d love to hear yours? Do you have a schedule you try to adhere to?

As mentioned above, this schedule does not happen every day! Somedays all we do is pick up the house and run errands, some days I have work projects to get done and the kids play independently and watch far too many movies. But somedays we manage to have time for creativity, chores, AND fun and we stick to our schedule and I feel awesome!

Kindergarten routine for children aged 2-3

It will be much easier for a child to adapt to kindergarten if home and kindergarten routines coincide.

It will be much easier for a child to adapt to kindergarten if home and kindergarten schedules coincide. Therefore, as early as possible, start accustoming your child to live according to the same daily routine as in kindergarten.

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Approximate daily routine for children 2-3 years old

Mode moments		Time
Home
Wake up, morning toilet		6.30–7.30
In a preschool institution
Reception of children, self-employment	nine0031  7. 00–8.00
Breakfast preparation, breakfast		8.00–8.20
		8.20–9.00
Preparing for a walk		9.00–9.20
Walk		9.20–11.20
Return from a walk, independent activity,  preparation for dinner		11.20–11.45
Lunch		11.45–12.20
Quiet games, preparation for sleep		12.00–12.30
Daytime sleep		12.30–15.00
Gradual rise, independent activity		15. 00–15.15
		15.15–15.25
Independent activity / Classes by subgroups		15.25–16.15
Preparing for a walk		16.15–16.30
Walk nine0022		16.30–17.30
Return from a walk, independent activity,  preparation for dinner		17.30–18.00
Dinner		18.00–18.30
Self-employment, going home		18.30–19.00
Home
Walk		19. 00–20.00
Return home, light dinner, quiet games,   hygienic procedures		20.00–30.30
Night sleep		20.30–6.30 (7.30)

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