As your daycare center grows, coming up with fresh and exciting lesson plans and activities to keep children interested and motivated to learn can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are many websites that offer free lesson plans, activity ideas, craft project ideas, printable worksheets, Ebooks, materials lists, and resources for early childhood education. Below is website listing for free preschool lesson plans and activities:

First School Preschool Lesson Plans: First-School provides free, fun preschool lesson plans, and activities for early childhood education. Here you will find printable crafts, a wealth of worksheets, and a host of other free preschool-related resources for preschool age children. There are also preschool materials lists and lesson plans categorized by theme. All activities can be modified to so that they are developmentally appropriate for the age group. [First-school.ws]

Enchanted Learning: Enchanted Learning offers creative, fun, and educational early childhood education materials. Print out lesson plans, worksheets, crafts and activities for preschoolers in a variety of categories. The site is user friendly, colorful, and includes printable books, tracing and cutting templates, games, rhymes and jokes. While this is a free site, members have access to print-friendly and ad-free pages. [Enchantedlearning.com]

TLS Books: TLSbooks.com provides free workout sheets for preschoolers in a variety of categories. There are shape, number, pre-math, concept, letter, fine motor skills, thinking, and color worksheets made specifically for preschool aged children. There are also teacher resources, reading tips, and craft ideas.

Gayle’s Preschool Rainbow: This site is great for both early childhood educators and parents. While the Resource Room is members-only and fee based, Activity Central provides a wealth of ideas for lesson plans and activities. There are free craft ideas as well as ideas for circle time activities, rhymes, songs and finger plays. [Preschoolrainbow.org]

KidZone: If you are looking for free, high-quality worksheets for Pre-K in a variety of categories, KidZone is a great place to start. There are worksheets for alphabet recognition and printing practice, basic skills worksheets, math worksheets and reading worksheets. There are also lesson plans that have been submitted by website visitors. [Kidzone.ws]

Curriculum books and software can be costly for licensed daycare providers. Instead of investing in expensive activity books and lesson plans for your child care resource center, consider searching the internet for lesson plans and activities that are free of cost. As an alternative, early childhood educators can join a membership site for a small yearly fee in order to have access to additional, superior material. Please keep in mind that it is legal for individuals or organizations to make copies of website materials for individual or classroom use only, but reproducing these materials for the purpose of commercial use is strictly forbidden.

For more: Start Your Own Daycare