A preschool timetable isn’t a school timetable with smaller boxes. Three- and four-year-olds don’t run on forty-minute periods; they run on rhythm — the same anchors in the same order every day, with variety layered on top.
Here’s how to build one that survives contact with an actual Tuesday, plus a template you can use as-is.
Download the free weekly timetable template (CSV) — opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers. Print it, or fill it in and share it with parents.
Start with the anchors, not the activities
Fix these five first, at the same time every day, before you plan a single activity:
- Arrival and settling
- Circle time — the day’s opening ritual
- Snack
- Lunch
- Rest / nap
- Departure
Children orient themselves by these. A child who knows snack comes after circle time is a calmer child, and a predictable day is what makes the unpredictable parts (a visitor, a fire drill, a birthday) survivable.
Everything else is filled into the gaps between anchors.
How long should a block be?
Attention span at this age runs roughly 3–5 minutes per year of age for an adult-led activity.
| Age | Adult-led block | Total sitting per session |
|---|---|---|
| 2–3 years | 5–10 min | 15 min |
| 3–4 years | 10–15 min | 20 min |
| 4–5 years | 15–20 min | 30 min |
| 5–6 years | 20–25 min | 40 min |
If a block runs longer than this, you’re not teaching for the back half of it — you’re managing behaviour.
Two rules that fix most timetable problems:
- Alternate active and quiet. Never two seated blocks in a row. Circle time → outdoor play → craft, not circle time → craft → story.
- Front-load the demanding work. Anything requiring real concentration goes between arrival and lunch. Afternoons are for free play, stories, music, and going home.
A worked example: 8:30–2:00 half-day
| Time | Block |
|---|---|
| 08:30–09:00 | Arrival, free play, settling |
| 09:00–09:20 | Circle time — greeting, calendar, weather, song |
| 09:20–09:50 | Focus activity (literacy / numeracy / theme work) |
| 09:50–10:10 | Snack |
| 10:10–10:40 | Outdoor play — gross motor |
| 10:40–11:10 | Activity centres — free choice |
| 11:10–11:40 | Craft, music, or movement (rotates by day) |
| 11:40–12:10 | Lunch |
| 12:10–13:10 | Rest / nap |
| 13:10–13:40 | Quiet free play |
| 13:40–14:00 | Story and wind-down |
| 14:00 | Departure |
For a full day to 4:30pm, extend after the story with outdoor play, a second snack, and free choice until pickup — don’t add a second block of structured teaching.
For younger toddlers (2–3), the same skeleton works with the focus block halved and the nap lengthened.
Adding variety without breaking the rhythm
The trick is to keep the slots identical every day and vary only what fills one or two of them.
| Slot | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11:10–11:40 | Art | Music | Movement | Art | Free choice |
| 09:20–09:50 | Literacy | Numeracy | Theme | Literacy | Show & tell |
Children still know what’s coming next; the content is what changes. This also makes your week much easier to explain to parents: “Wednesday is movement day.”
Give the whole week a light theme — weather, animals, festivals, colours — and let it flavour the focus block, the craft and the story. It gives teachers a planning shortcut and gives parents something concrete to ask about at home.
The mistakes worth avoiding
Too many transitions. Every changeover costs five minutes and a chunk of everyone’s patience. Six blocks a day beats ten.
No buffer. Plan the day to about 80% of the available time. Shoes, toilet trips, and one child’s meltdown all need somewhere to go.
Ignoring the teacher’s day. A timetable with no gap between blocks means the teacher has no moment to set up the next one — so it either starts late or starts badly. Build setup time into the plan.
A pretty timetable nobody follows. If the printed version and the real day diverge within a fortnight, fix the timetable, not the teacher.
Copying the primary-school model. Subject periods and bells belong to older children. Preschool runs on rhythm and play.
Share it with parents
A timetable that lives only in the staff room is doing half its job. Parents who know the week can prepare for it — sports shoes on movement day, a water bottle for outdoor play — and, more usefully, they get better answers at home than “what did you do today?” “nothing”.
The simplest version: print it, put it on the notice board, and send a photo to parents at the start of term. It costs nothing and noticeably reduces “did you know today was…?” phone calls.
If your school uses Mazhali, the weekly timetable is a built-in feature — you build a library of reusable blocks once, drag them onto each class’s week, and copy last week forward in one tap. Parents get a read-only view of their own child’s class, and you can turn that visibility on or off per class. See How to Build Your Class Timetable for the walkthrough.
Review it once a term
Sit down with the teachers who actually run the day and ask three questions:
- Which block consistently overruns?
- Which block are the children restless in?
- What are we doing at 11am that we’d rather do at 9:30?
Then change the timetable. A timetable is a working document, not a wall decoration — the good ones get edited every term.