As the term, daycare and preschool in early childhood education signify it is all about taking care of a very young group of people. In this context, a question comes to mind that how should be my class setup.
As we are dealing with very sensitive humans, so the class should be in a way that boosts and help their holistic development. In the classroom, everything should be within the reach of the child. As we have to work on their overall skills the class environment needs to be safe and child-friendly. The first and most important thing in your class setup is that it should be educational, hygienic, and engaging for the children.
Have you ever entered daycare and observed how pleasing a classroom looks to you?
Is the class enough attractive and mind-stimulating that your child will be happy while you are away for so long time? Here, I am sharing some important tips with you, how to make a classroom set up child-friendly. The motive of early childhood education is to develop life skills in the child. The major brain development happens from 0 years until the age of 8 years. So, it becomes very crucial the kind of daycare set up your child is going. In order to teach them different life concepts divide the classroom into different corners. The benefits of dividing different corners in a class are to build discipline in them and motivate them to be more organized, and self-dependent in their life.
THE STUDY CORNER IN THE CLASSROOM :
The study corner should be designed in a way that grabs the attention of a child. It should look interesting and should ooze a positive vibe for the child. At this tender age, we cannot force children to sit and study, and we need to do it in a playful way. We need to ensure we are rich in our resources, and everything is easily approachable to them. All the materials in the class should be at the children's level. The corner should have sufficient study material in the form of books, pencils, colors, etc. In order to encourage a child for their independent behavior child should be given the freedom to use the resources. Although they need to understand concepts, so we just need to guide and supervise them.
READING CORNER IN THE CLASSROOM:
This corner should be a comfortable place for children where they can relax and read books. This corner is the peaceful place of the class with the main motive of increasing vocabulary and life skills with the help of books. The selection of the books should be age-appropriate, as infants need more picture books while the grown-ups need books with a rich source of vocabulary. The teacher can do picture talk and can ask open-ended questions to the children. As infants and toddlers are in their sensorimotor stage, so it is important to keep in touch and feel books in the class. This corner can be used to keep stuffed animals to give them a cozy feel.
BLOCKS CORNER IN THE CLASSROOM:
This corner can involve toys and other resources that are helpful to boost their mathematical concepts. They can use blocks to learn counting and the concept of tall/short, etc. The Duplo blocks, stacking rings, knob puzzles, toy cars, etc. all are powerful learning tools for children. They help to build spatial reasoning, enhance children's fine motor and engineering skills. This corner needs to be rich in manipulative and open-ended toys to help children boost their creativity and imagination.
ART CORNER IN THE CLASSROOM:
The art corner should have all the material related to the artwork. The aim of this corner is to develop their artistic skill. This corner should be full of artistic things like crayons, colors, pencils, papers, drawing material, etc. We need to give them freedom with their art as they try to represent their emotions and experience through art. They are naturally curious people and their bucket is always full of questions. They can use their self-directed unstructured art as a language to depict their experiences. This corner serves as an important tool to enhance their pincer grip and overall cognitive development.
DRAMATIC CORNER IN THE CLASSROOM:
The children love to do role-play. They follow the actions of adults and try to imitate them. This corner can involve dresses related to different professions, animals, dolls, masks, telephones, kitchen sets, etc. Children learn a lot from dramatic play it helps them understand their world better. It is an important corner of the class to increase their social-emotional skills. The children generally start to pretend to play from 18 months, and we need to encourage it.
The class should be well organized and clean with all the necessary things in it. As infants and toddlers love to explore the world through their mouths due to their sensorimotor developmental stage. It is important to keep only non-choke-able items in the class. The children need a safe place to crawl, jump and hide so they need room to push, pull, ride and run. By keeping, plenty of toys will give them the opportunity to enhance their gross motor skills. It is important to keep in mind do not to overstuff your classroom set up as a child will not be focused because of so many options available. All the stuff needs to be labeled with the name and pictures on the label so that it will be easy for children to understand during clean up time. The children should be given freedom and opportunity to use their skills instead of showing the end product of everything.
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