Working in a small home space for preschool can limit the things you can do in the room. There are many professionals who recommend centers to be set up in the classroom. But when you have a small classroom you must decide what centers are the most important and which you can do without. I got the Getting started booklet from Mother Goose Time this month and in it they have a suggestion for how to set up a room. But what I found is that the layout they have suggested looks to be for a room that is in a large center. But many of us are not large centers and it is very hard finding inspiration on the internet for family child care rooms. Many times, the rooms you see on Pinterest are so fancy. And then you are stuck hate liking pictures. Hate liking means you love the way the room looks and you are insanely jealous because you don’t have the millions of feet like the pretty pictures you have found for inspiration. Today we are going to discuss how to create a preschool environment in a small space without giving up centers. This is my classroom. As you can tell I did take the suggestion of creating an active to quiet flow in the room. It has helped a ton with conflict in the classroom. I have six children enrolled in the preschool so I could technically just have one table in the classroom. But I have found that two tables actually frees up space in the classroom for other centers to be added. One table became the art table and the other table becomes the manipulatives table where they can do sand or water table. The stem table has the puzzles under it so that we can make sure we have room. We have a reading corner and the shelves are set up like a Montessori classroom. By that I mean I have one toy per shelf or I have similar toys in one baskets.
One of the most important things to remember about a small space is that having an open space for free play is more important than having the room divided by shelves or fancy partitions. The reason the open space is important because children need the space to use their imaginations. This is how they process their new information. So if that part is in place you already have an excellent space for children to explore! See you next time! Ms. Tessie |