A preschool lesson plan template is the blank version of the plan your center asks for: a weekly grid that lays one week of activities across the days, and a daily sheet that turns a single day into something a co-teacher, floater or substitute can run your room from.
Both are below, free to copy into any document.
If your center uses a published curriculum, its guides supply the content — the template is where that content becomes your week.
Weekly preschool lesson plan template
The weekly grid is the overview a director can review at a glance: one page showing the week's focus, how it moves through each part of the day, and what changes in the room as the week goes on.
Days sit across the top, the parts of the day down the side, and each cell holds what that block will do that day.
The rows below lay out one shape of a center preschool day — circle, small groups, centers and outdoor, story — so rename them to match your program's schedule.
Copy the table into any document, add your center's name and the week's dates, and it is ready to fill.
| Day | Circle or group time | Small groups | Centers and outdoor | Story, songs and closing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| This week's focus | ||||
| Monday | ||||
| Tuesday | ||||
| Wednesday | ||||
| Thursday | ||||
| Friday | ||||
If your center adopts a published curriculum, its guides give the grid its content.
Teaching Strategies describes The Creative Curriculum for Preschool as a program for 3- and 4-year-olds built on play-based studies, with a Curriculum Guide, 9 Teaching Guides and 7 Foundation Volumes among its components — those studies are what a week's grid carries, and the grid is where you spread one across the days and adapt it for the children in your room.
Write materials into the cell
Daily preschool lesson plan template
The daily sheet is the plan that leaves your classroom.
A floater covering your lunch break, a substitute in on a sick day, or a co-teacher picking up mid-week can run the room from it — block by block, with the objective and the materials named for each part of the day.
The Time column stays blank here on purpose: the times come from your program's posted schedule, and that schedule is a program decision — the template only records it.
Fill the times in once and the sheet becomes a master you rebuild each week.
| Time | Part of the day | Activity and materials | Objective | Changes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arrival and choice time | ||||
| Circle time | ||||
| Small groups and centers | ||||
| Outdoor play | ||||
| Lunch and rest | ||||
| Story and closing circle |
Two habits make the sheet worth the effort.
Write the objective as something a child does, observable inside the block it is attached to.
And use the Changes column to plan both directions at once: the step-back for a child who needs an easier entry into the activity, and the stretch for a child ready for more.
The writing itself is its own skill — how goals get worded, how much detail a block needs, how a week is built from a focus.
Our guide to how to write lesson plans works through that line by line; this page stays on the container the writing lands in.
How to fill in the template
Start from the two things you do not decide: your program's daily schedule, and whatever curriculum or approach your center runs.
The template records those decisions; it does not make them.
Everything you write afterward sits inside the structure your program already sets.
For the content, one published check works at every cell: NAEYC's Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) position statement (2020) holds that each child from birth through age 8 has the right to equitable learning opportunities — in a center, a family child care home or a school — and names three core considerations for planning: commonality in children's development and learning, individuality, and the context in which development and learning occur.
Read against the grid, that is three questions per activity: is the challenge right for this age, does it fit the particular children in your room, and does it work in your space and schedule.
If your program assesses with an observational tool, borrow its wording for the objective column.
Teaching Strategies describes GOLD as an online observational assessment for children from birth through third grade and cites 38 objectives, and its checkpoint reports show which children are below, at or above widely held expectations — a plan that names an objective per activity hands you the notes the next checkpoint round needs.
One distinction saves confusion: if your program pairs the Pyramid Model with its curriculum, the Pyramid Model is a framework of evidence-based practices for young children's social-emotional development that works alongside a curriculum rather than replacing one — so it changes how the day runs, not what a new section of the template has to say.
Planning is one skill inside the role.
The preschool teacher career guide covers the rest — duties, settings, requirements and the path in.
Where these frameworks come from
Lesson plan templates for infants and toddlers
An infant or toddler room breaks the preschool grid, and the reason is the day itself: care routines — feeding, diapering, rest — happen one child at a time rather than in whole-group blocks.
A template for the room records those routines and interactions rather than themed activities, and the individual-notes column is where each child's own schedule lives.
The interaction worth planning has a name: Harvard's Center on the Developing Child describes serve and return — responsive back-and-forth exchanges between a young child and a caring adult — as interactions that play a key role in shaping brain architecture.
In the template, that becomes a column: what each routine turns into a conversation about, and with which child.
| Part of the day | What happens | Language and interaction | Individual notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drop-off and handoff | |||
| Care routines: feeding, diapering, rest | |||
| Floor and outdoor exploration | |||
| Short group moments: songs and stories | |||
| Pick-up and family notes |
The quality tools draw the age line the same way the planning does: ITERS-3, published in 2017, covers center-based programs serving children from birth through age 2, while ECERS-3 (2015) covers ages 3-5 and FCCERS-3 (2019) covers home-based programs birth through age 12.
And where observation feeds an assessment — in California, DRDP (2025) is now fully implemented for programs serving infants through grade 3 — the notes column is what those observations are written from.
If you are moving between age groups, the format question is worth asking in the interview: who writes the plans, in what template, and who covers the room while they are written.
The preschool teacher jobs board is where the comparing starts.