Routines are necessary in OSHC. Children need to be accounted for, food needs to be available, spaces need to be supervised, resources need to be managed and departures need to happen safely. In a busy service, routines create predictability and help the afternoon work.
Because they happen every day, though, routines can also become almost invisible. Arrival happens the way arrival has always happened. Afternoon tea begins at a particular time. Children wait in a familiar place before moving outside. Some resources remain available only when an educator can retrieve them, and pack-up begins because the clock says it is time.
There may be sound reasons for each of these practices. The question is not whether routines are good or bad, or whether greater flexibility is always better. It is whether a routine is still serving its purpose—and what children experience as they move through it.
In What Happens Between 3.00 and 6.00? The Pedagogy of the OSHC Afternoon, I explore why the OSHC program is shaped by more than the experiences listed on it. Time, relationships, access, play, leisure and routines all contribute to children’s experience. This companion piece takes one part of that argument into practice by looking closely at the routines that organise the afternoon.
There is no need to review the whole afternoon at once. Choose one routine that happens regularly enough for the team to observe it over several days. It might be arrival, afternoon tea, moving between indoor and outdoor spaces, accessing equipment, a group transition, pack-up or departure.
Begin by asking why the routine exists. This can reveal an important difference between its purpose and the method the service has become accustomed to using.
Take afternoon tea. Its purposes may include ensuring children have access to food, managing allergies safely, maintaining hygiene and providing appropriate supervision. “Everyone sits down at 3.30pm” is one possible method for achieving those purposes.
That distinction matters because methods can gradually become fixed even when the original purpose could be achieved in more than one way. Perhaps every child does need to eat at the same time in your particular environment. Perhaps they do not. The aim is not to assume another approach would be better, but to understand what genuinely needs to remain and what may simply have become habit.
Before changing anything, observe the routine across several ordinary afternoons. Look beyond whether children comply with it successfully and notice what happens around it.
Who moves through the routine easily, and who needs repeated reminders? Where do children wait or require adult permission? What gets interrupted? Does the routine create pressure elsewhere in the afternoon? How much educator attention is spent maintaining the process?
You may discover that pack-up itself is not the issue. The difficulty may be that children receive almost no warning before something they have built for forty minutes needs to disappear. An afternoon-tea routine may work well for most children but repeatedly interrupt a group that becomes deeply involved in outdoor play immediately after arrival. Children may technically have access to many resources, while the things they most want still require an educator to unlock, retrieve or approve them.
Observation helps the team move beyond a general judgement that a routine is “working” or “not working”. It makes children’s actual experience more visible.
Critical reflection can easily become something adults do about children’s experience without asking children how they understand it. If a routine affects them every day, their perspectives should be part of examining it.
The conversation does not need to become a formal consultation exercise. Educators might ask, while the routine is happening, what children like about it, what frustrates them, what they seem to spend time waiting for, or what they wish they could continue for longer. Children might also be invited to suggest how the routine could work differently.
Their responses may challenge adult assumptions. A process educators expect children to dislike may be valued because it is familiar and predictable. Something adults consider efficient may feel unnecessarily restrictive. Children may also identify a small possibility the team has overlooked.
Seeking children’s perspectives does not mean every suggestion must be implemented. Safety, supervision, staffing, regulations, the physical environment and the needs of other children still matter. It means children contribute to understanding a routine they experience, rather than being asked only to adapt to decisions already made.
Most OSHC routines sit within genuine tensions rather than simple right-or-wrong choices. A routine may be balancing predictability with flexibility, safety with independence, group needs with individual influence, efficient transitions with uninterrupted play, or resource management with children’s access.
These tensions do not always require the service to choose one side. Predictability does not have to mean rigidity. Children can understand how afternoon tea operates while still having some flexibility in when they participate. A service can protect particular resources while gradually increasing children’s independent access to them. Pack-up can remain necessary while educators create a way to preserve a long-term construction, game or project.
Once the tension is clear, the practical question becomes:
Could we achieve the same purpose while changing how children experience the routine?
This keeps reflection connected to both children’s participation and the operational realities of the service.
If the team identifies something worth exploring, make the change small enough to learn from it. A service-wide redesign is rarely necessary as a first response.
You might extend the afternoon-tea window for one week, provide independent access to a resource that previously required adult permission, give a longer warning before a routine that regularly interrupts play, or create a simple way for children to identify something they want to continue the following day. Older children might take greater responsibility for one part of a routine, or a whole-group transition might become smaller movements where supervision arrangements allow it.
Sometimes observation will show that the routine itself does not need changing. Children may simply not understand why it exists, in which case the useful response is to involve them in that conversation.
A small trial is not change for its own sake. It is a way of gathering better information about what becomes possible—or more difficult—when one element changes.
After the trial, come back to the routine before the new approach becomes the next unquestioned habit. Consider what became easier, what became harder and whether the change created an unexpected effect elsewhere in the afternoon.
Children’s perspectives matter again. What did they notice? Did the change make a meaningful difference to them? Do they want it to continue, be adjusted or return to the previous approach?
A trial that does not work is not necessarily a failed reflection. It may have shown the team something they could not have known beforehand. The decision now rests on observation, children’s perspectives, discussion and professional reasoning rather than familiarity alone.
Routines can be both necessary and responsive
Re-thinking routines does not mean removing the structures that help children feel safe and services function effectively. Some routines may remain exactly as they are because their purpose is clear and they work well for the children and context. Others may need one small adjustment.
The value lies in making sure familiarity is not the only justification for practice.
Routines are one place where everyday pedagogy becomes visible. They organise children’s time, shape access and independence, and influence whether experiences can continue. Looking closely at one routine can therefore reveal much more than a logistical process; it can show what the service makes possible for children across the afternoon.
Choose one routine. Understand its purpose. Watch what children experience. Ask them. Identify the tension, test one manageable change and return to what happened.
That is enough to begin.
The free OSHC Afternoon Reflection uses the Learn OSHC THINK → EXPLORE → REFLECT → LEARN → CONNECT process to help educators and teams examine the rhythm, routines, participation and intentionality within their own afternoon.
Use it individually, with an Educational Leader or as the basis for a team conversation.
You can also read the broader thought-leadership article that began this conversation: What Happens Between 3.00 and 6.00? The Pedagogy of the OSHC Afternoon in The Sector
