What Should I Think About When Setting Up My Infant/Toddler Classroom?

Question

Answer

When setting up an infant/toddler classroom some things to consider are:

• Placement of toys in new areas
• New associations between toys
• Visually surprising theme ideas
• Provocations with found objects
• Opportunities for curiosity and discovery

Your room setup is about curiosity, surprise and discovery. It's about placing the toys in new and different ways. Take them off the shelf, and put them in the middle of the room. Take a toy and put it on a climber, hide a toy in a refrigerator. Every time you put it in a new place, children think about it in a different way, make novel associations with it and discover something unique and wonderful. Every time you make a new combination (e.g., cars in the block corner, baby dolls at the texture table), it increases collaboration and learning.

I need visually surprising theme ideas. I need them to come in and go, "Ah, well, I wouldn't have thought of that!" If you're going to create wonder, if you're going to create surprise and discovery, then you have to feel that enthusiasm. Look for something unusual and help them be surprised. I have a little two-and-a-half-year-old, and each time he would come into the classroom every week, he would say to his mom, "I wonder what Miss Karen has for me today." That's the goal: that they think what we create, what we put out is for their learning, for their joy, and to show our love, and that each one is an opportunity for discovery and curiosity.

I love to use found objects, such as toilet paper, to create provocations, as seen below. I hang rolls of toilet paper from a shower curtain rod with fishing wire, and the children can pull on it. Talk about curiosity and surprise! The parents will say to me, "My child's going to love it, I can't wait. He's crazy about pulling toilet paper. He's going to be so shocked that you are encouraging him to do it in the classroom." And then guess what happens? They come to the classroom, and they don't pull it. It takes them two days to a week to figure out, "Whoa, I want to pull this," because it's a whole new association, it's a whole new spatial relationship. It's above them and it's different. When they start pulling the toilet paper all the way across the room and around the slide, now we're talking about math, now we're talking about science, now we're talking about problem-solving. I also put a wading pool at the bottom so the little ones can sit in it and pull the toilet paper down on their heads. Or, they may just accidentally pull some because they're playing with their fingers and it's a wonderful fine motor exercise. I also like to use boxes. I need lots of things in the room for children to stack and knockdown.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, We Create Magic: Experiences and Environment for Infant/Toddler Classrooms, by Karen Deerwester, EdS.