If you work with me you’ll know how much I bloody love moving things around. Firstly, I enjoy going to sleep at night being certain that underneath the units are completely clear of shit. Secondly, I feel like it’s an absolutely essential part of being an Early Years teacher.
Every day the children come to school. They treat the classroom exactly as I want them to: as a home from home. Children access every area of the classroom independently and know that they can always ask if they feel stuck. It works, but it’s taken time for it to be this way.
Aside from learning through observing the footfall of children during their continuous provision, the main reason for changing stuff around is to ensure that the space flows. As much as I hate to say it, angled furniture seems to encourage the flow to various areas of provision, although it does my head in. The best thing to conquer my desire for straight-ness whilst ensuring the flow is maintained is through the addition of circular tables. There’s little better than a low perfectly circular table in the classroom. I love them for two reasons: they change the flow of those who walk through provision and they are great for encouraging communication. Very rarely have we only one child around a circular table, whereas often we saw children individually sat or stood at little rectangle tables.
The more interesting the furniture, the more I love it. I love strange tables and baskets and bits and bobs. They promote inquisitive nature. They promote ‘special-ness-ness’ much more than the fold out red tables that were in Year R previously. Children visit them more often and seem to almost link their learning to the places at which it happened. (Sounds like I have a mini research project in the pipeline).
Very often I’ll stand in the middle of the room and watch the children play independently, admiring their focus and learning. The minute that the children are showing me something is the moment things change. For example, the deconstructed role play area. I both love and hate this place. On one hand it’s where dreams are made and creativity comes to life. On the other it’s a vat of crap that’s piled in a way that I try to see as neat, but resembles a compost heap. Anyway, it was working really well – imaginative play, creativity and loads of rich conversations were had there. After a few weeks it dwindled. Tubes were being rolled about the place and little learning was occurring. We switched this about, took away some of the masses of stuff that we had there and suddenly the children were back to their creative selves. Nothing had changed but replacement and reduction meant children gained a new focus in this area.
Similarly the writing station changed today. I hate it. I hate looking at it. It makes me itchy and uneasy. But the children loved it. The aim was to engage boys in more writing opportunities indoors (ooh stereotypical, I know!) and so far it looks like it’s encouraging them to make marks. A bit of dark, a bit of secret writing and hey presto! they’re all fucking authors. Well, they’re in it and making marks and that suits me just fine today.
So I will continue to have the piss taken out of me for moving shit around. I will take it on the chin, for every move I make is to ensure the children in class are getting a bloody good start to their lives and thrive as human beings. Even if it is annoying for adults to see 😋
The learning expedition of Mrs P 