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Making plans

Planning is a skill children grow into. Some children want a plan for everything, and some want to leap. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard says children are born with the potential to build these skills, and build them through interactions and practice.

By Lundbo. Last updated November 1, 2026. Sources are listed at the end.

Ages 3 to 5

  • Try a play plan: before they start, children decide who they are going to be and what they are going to do, and draw the plan on paper.1
  • Planning means thinking first and then acting. Imaginary play and made-up stories give lots of practice.1

Ages 5 to 7

  • Games with rules, like Simon Says, Red Light Green Light and Go Fish, are enjoyed at this age, though interest and skill vary a lot.2
  • Any board game with some strategy gives chances to make a plan and hold it in mind for several moves.2
  • Step back as soon as you can. It is harder, and better practice, when children remember and enforce the rules themselves.2

Plan a little, go, fix the plan

That is the spirit of our early readers. In Plan First!, Stilts likes a plan and Snip likes to go. Neither wins, and each is right once. In The Crooked Shelf, June measures once and the shelf is crooked, so she fixes it. Praise the fixing as much as the planning. These are our own tellings, made for ages 4 to 7.

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Sources

  1. Executive Function Activities for 3- to 5-Year-Olds, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
  2. Executive Function Activities for 5- to 7-Year-Olds, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
  3. Activities Guide: Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills with Children from Infancy to Adolescence, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, May 6, 2014

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