tainers on easy-to-reach shelves for self-service activities in each of your learning centers.
- Put anything you do not want children to use freely out of reach, but keep plenty of materials for free exploration available in well-marked containers.
- Encourage children to use materials freely and even interchangeably throughout the room during activity time. Be sure they know where each item belongs when it's time to clean up.
Build a sense of safety and security
- Provide toys, books, and photos that children may be familiar with from a former class or from home.
- Define spaces with center markers and dividers so that children have the security of knowing where they are and what they are supposed to do there.
- Create comfort with quiet, soft places for children to rest and cuddle with a stuffed toy and a good book.
- Invite parents to stay, visit, and participate. It is amazing how secure children feel when they see a relationship unfolding between their parent and teacher.
Create centers that cultivate problem solving
- Use play furniture and storage shelves to organize your room into workable, welcoming learning centers.
- Imagine that you are setting up an apartment in a loft. Where would you put the kitchen (dramatic play), den (blocks), and library (book/meeting area)? Instead of putting all your tables in me center of the room, and learning centers around the edges, consider cutting the space up into these inviting "mini-rooms" that feel more like a home.
- Place a limit on numbers of children working in each center. It's much easier for children to practice negotiating and resolving conflicts with just a few other children at one time. Small, well-defined learning centers with a limit on the numbers of children playing at a given time help children learn important social skills.
Reflect the faces and cultures of the families
- Invite families to send in photos of family and friends. These photos help build an awareness of the diversity of the classroom community.
- Add children's books, dramatic-play and cooking materials, photos, and maps that represent the cultures and countries of your classroom family.
- Invite families to share the arts and crafts, photos, and maps of their culture. Ask them to come and share a special skill or interest with the children.
Provide stimulation and challenge
- A wide variety of open-ended, multi-sensory materials make a strong statement to children that you respect and appreciate their individual learning styles.
- Keep in mind the need for materials that interest and inspire visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic learners.
- "Change the variable" by adding just one material in a center periodically so that children have new items to experiment with and use. Centers can become too familiar and predictable. By adding just one new thing to a center, you can challenge children to think of new ways to work there.
Inject beauty every day
- Add one piece of beauty every day to your classroom setting. Studies show that the aesthetics of color, beauty, and nature in the classroom have a strong, positive impact on children's behavior.
- Try creating a space for beauty in the room. Each day, provide beauty in the form of nature (a plant, leaf, flower) or art (a picture, photo, sculpture, quilt, box).
- Keep clutter away. Children can be overstimulated by messy piles of papers, toys, and books.