The General Planning Guide
How to plan a great camp day — the principles, the rhythm, the lens, and the process. Read this once; reference it all summer. Every week guide builds on what's here.
This is the foundation document. It holds everything that's true for every week of camp — the planning principles, the daily rhythm, the executive-function lens, and a repeatable process for planning a week. You read it once and come back to it whenever you need a refresher.
Each week then has its own short guide — same format every time — that applies these ideas to that week's theme, with two fully-worked day plans you can model from. General Guide first, then your week. That's the whole system.
Sixteen Tips for Successful Camp Days
Most planning mistakes are really thinking mistakes made earlier. These sixteen, in three clusters, are the difference between a teacher who looks calm and one who looks underwater.
Children feel safe when the shape of the day is predictable. Content changes daily; the rhythm never does. Rhythm is the foundation everything else stands on.
One main activity you're genuinely excited about, plus 2–3 flexible satellites. Plan eight things and you'll reach three and feel like a failure. Plan one great thing and options.
High-energy work in the cool early morning. High-focus work mid-morning after snack. Calm into rest and late afternoon. Fighting the day's natural arc is exhausting and futile.
Materials staged, stations set, backup ready. The moment you turn your back to dig for supplies, you've lost the room. Prep the afternoon before — never the morning of.
A 3.5-year-old and a nearly-5 are far apart developmentally. Build each activity with a low floor and a high ceiling — simple enough for the youngest to succeed, open enough for the oldest to stretch.
Days fall apart in the cracks between activities, not during them. Plan every transition — the cleanup song, the callback, the walk to the bathroom — as deliberately as an activity.
Circle: 10–15 minutes. A teacher-led block: 15–20 before a shift. Plan shorter than feels natural and always build in a way to move.
Children need agency to stay regulated. The activity is planned; within it, offer real choices — "net or scoop?" Choice is the pressure-release valve that prevents power struggles.
If an activity is dying, reading the room and changing course is a skill, not a failure. The plan serves the children — never the reverse. Abandon a sinking plan without guilt.
Children borrow the nervous system of the adult in the room. When a hard moment hits, lower your voice and slow down. Co-regulation is the actual mechanism of learning.
Diapering, handwashing, hydration, sunscreen, cleanup — not interruptions to the plan. They are the plan. Treat them as real items or you run behind by 10am.
Skip the craft kit where every child makes an identical jellyfish. Open-ended process art builds more — and photographs more authentically. Twelve identical crafts say "assembly line."
A nervous teacher performs all day and burns out. Set up a great invitation, then observe — narrate, ask, follow the child's lead. The best moments come from watching.
Looser, more joyful, more outdoor, more water, more mess than the school year. If camp feels like school with a beach theme, you've missed the point.
Arrival and departure are the parent touchpoints. The bookends of the day disproportionately shape how a family feels about camp. Be warm, present, and specific at both.
If there's more than one adult, communicate constantly and visibly. Divide the room, signal each other, never both drift to the same corner. A silent team looks lost.
The Energy Arc of a Camp Day
Children are not equally capable of everything at all times. This is the natural arc of a child's focus and energy across the day — plan WITH it, never against it.
The Daily Rhythm — Four Fixed Rocks
Every classroom builds its day the same way — four blocks fixed by the clock, everything else flex. The four fixed rocks are the same in every room: morning snack, lunch, rest, and afternoon snack. What changes from room to room is the clock — when each rock lands — and the order of the flex blocks around them. Learning to plan in the flex space around your room's rocks is half the job.
Here are the four fixed rocks for each classroom. They're locked — you plan around them, never through them. Find your room's column; those four times are the spine of your day.
| The four fixed rocks | Bigs · 3.5–5 | Littles · 2–3.5 | Toddlers · 18 mo–2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morning Snack | 9:30–9:50 | 9:05–9:25 | 9:30–9:50 |
| Lunch | 11:35–12:10 | 11:15–11:55 | 11:10–11:50 |
| Rest / Nap | 1:00–3:00 quiet time | 12:30–3:00 nap | 12:30–3:00 nap |
| Afternoon Snack | 3:30–3:50 | 3:30–3:50 | 3:00–3:30 |
Where's the rest of the day? The flex blocks — circle, outdoor play, the theme activity, centers, manipulatives, the closing — fill the spaces between the rocks, and their order differs by room (the Littles, for instance, head outside before circle; the Bigs open with circle). Your week guide opens with your room's complete daily rhythm — every block, fixed and flex, in order. That table is your working schedule; this section is the principle behind it.
Executive Function — A Lens, Not a Lesson
We're beginning to explore executive function (EF) as a team. Here's the friendly version. The good news up front: you are almost certainly already building EF every day. This isn't a new thing to do — it's a new way to see what you already do, and a few small ways to do it on purpose.
EF is the set of mental skills children use to focus, remember, plan, and manage themselves. Researchers find it predicts school success more strongly than early academics like letters or counting. And it grows through exactly the kind of play you already plan — pretend, building, games with rules, sorting. There are three core skills:
Working Memory
Holding information in mind and using it.
Inhibitory Control
Resisting an impulse, waiting, focusing, self-regulating.
Cognitive Flexibility
Shifting between rules or perspectives, adapting.
What EF looks like in the children
You can't watch for something abstract. So here is the concrete version — the real, visible behaviors that mean a child's EF is working and growing. Catch these in the room, and you're seeing development happen.
- Follows a 2–3 step direction without asking you to repeat it
- Remembers a rule from earlier in the day and applies it
- Knows what comes next in the routine without prompting
- Brings back an idea or word from yesterday
- Waits for a turn without being reminded
- Stops an action mid-stream when asked
- Uses the signal or raises a hand instead of blurting
- Resists grabbing — chooses gentle, careful movement
- Tries a second strategy after the first one fails
- Sorts or groups the same things a new way
- Rolls with a change of plan without melting down
- Takes on a different role in pretend play
As you plan any activity, ask yourself one question: "Where's the EF in this?" Sometimes the answer is obvious (a freeze game = inhibitory control). Sometimes you'll realize a small tweak adds it — turning "here are the animals" into "can you sort these, then sort them a different way?" You don't need EF in every minute. But the strongest activities have a clear answer. One question, asked while you plan — that's the whole practice.
When you catch a child using EF, say it out loud to them in plain words: "You waited for your turn — that took self-control." · "Your first tower fell and you tried a different way — that's flexible thinking." · "You remembered all three steps." Naming the invisible skill is how it becomes visible to the child — and that is how it grows. Narration is the lowest-effort, highest-return EF move you have.
How to Plan Your Own Week — Five Steps
The week guides give you Weeks 1 and 2 fully worked. When you plan Weeks 3–10 yourself, follow this. Five steps, same order, every time.
Start with the anchor
Read the theme outline. Find the one memorable Friday moment — the anchor (the petting zoo, the treasure hunt, the showcase). Everything in the week builds toward it. If the theme outline doesn't name one, choose it yourself: what's the photographable moment a child will tell their parent about?
Sketch the week's arc
Five days that build, not five disconnected days. The pattern: establish → develop → develop → rehearse or assemble → perform. Give each day a one-line sub-focus. Monday introduces, Friday celebrates, the middle does the real work.
Pick the week's EF lens
Look at the theme's developmental value. Which one EF skill does this theme naturally build the most? That becomes the week's lens — one skill, not three. You'll still see all three EF skills appear; you're just choosing which one to plan toward and narrate on purpose this week.
Build each day around the four fixed rocks
Drop in your room's four locked rocks first — the two snacks, lunch, and rest. (Part 3 lists the exact times for every room; your week guide's rhythm table has your room's full day.) Then place the flex blocks around them — circle, outdoor play, the theme activity, centers — in your room's order. One anchor activity per day plus 2–3 flexible satellites. Don't overfill.
Plan the capture — one moment a day
For each day, decide the one moment worth a Brightwheel post and the photo you'll grab. Pre-decide it; don't leave it to chance. One intentional post a day beats six scattered ones — a firehose makes parents tune out; a single good moment makes them lean in. The theme anchor activity is your natural documentation window.
The Operational Checklist
Concrete things to have in place — easy to forget, expensive to skip. These belong in every week, not just one.
You are not planning a performance. You are planning an environment.