How to structure a day for young ones

[playfelt]

I have a large pizza box that I glued felt to the front of the lid and inside I keep general type felt such as some nursery rhymes or counting rhymes or a songs like itsy bitsy spider. Whenever there is a lull or things seem to be getting tense I can break the cycle by grabbing the box and finding a place to sit and they come and join me for awhile. I usually have a second box of bin set up with seasonal stuff and in this one include felt board stuff, fingerpuppet stuff, etc. Nothing that takes more than a couple minutes to do as in not lengthy stories. Just gap fillers. It also works well for toddlers since their attention span for each item is only about a "gap" long. Just switch things in and out of the boxes according to interests or seasonal changes.