It was late 2010 and I had only just begun to teach in a kindergarten. Violet, who was a senior colleague of mine seeing me on a late afternoon moving around classroom furniture and struggling to set it up for a group of 2 to 3 year olds, stepped in. By telling me about a few simple but crucial things I needed to do to make it work she set me up for success in years to come.
Though I had years of teaching studies behind me, plenty of visits to and analysis of different kinds of kindergarten classrooms, half a year of internship and yet no one ever conveyed this in such a blunt way to me before.
Ever since that afternoon, I have been led by Violet’s kindergarten classroom setup guidelines and today, 12 years later, after intentional looking into some research on the physical environment of early childhood settings, I was taken aback with how much Violet was right about it all.
Thank you Violet.
So where and how to start the right way with setting up your kindergarten classroom?
Guideline #1 - Start at the door
Always start at the door, Violet told me. Go down and sit on your heels, and observe. What is the first thing your eyes fall on to? The reason is, you need your classroom to be inviting. You want children wanting to come in. Depending on the age group you’re setting up the classroom for, you should know or figure out their interests and position the learning corner or the right kind of resources facing the door entrance. This way the classroom assists you by grabbing children's attention and becoming attractive enough for them to come in on their own.
Guideline #2 - Place the arts corner
The next best thing for you to do is decide on where to position the arts corner. And I will tell you where. Where the bathroom is. The reasons for this are of very practical nature. In other words, the bathroom decides, not you. If for some reasons you really cannot comply with this guideline, then locate your arts corner as close to the bathroom area as possible. Art activities are messy but also other activities that are not necessarily directly art related but require frequent use of water or hand washing should probably be best off near the running water point.
Messy play, cooking activities and such, but be careful with sand trays.
Once you define exactly where your arts and/or messy play learning corner should be, and which learning corner is going to sit in front of the entrance, you can continue with planning out the rest of your classroom.
Guideline #3 - Divide with only appropriate furniture
Establishing learning corners or better yet dividing them is most often and predominantly done by using classroom furniture.
Two features you must look at when it comes to the dividers you use in your classroom, is their height and transparency. Dividers must have at least one of the two, if not both: appropriate height and see-through quality. It is a matter of safety so you should never overlook this rule when organizing your classroom.
As an adult, you must have a visual of the whole classroom from pretty much anywhere in the room.
Defining appropriate height of the furniture will logically depend on the age of your children. When it comes to having pre-schoolers for example, you should be able to see their upper bodies and what the children are up to, involved into. For younger ones, babies especially, you will want to see their whole body as they move around and play in the classroom.
Transparency in terms of the pieces of furniture means that you are using shelves as dividers. Also, whether you have shelves or not, any piece of furniture that is taller than your children should be placed upon (and maybe even supported against) the wall and not in the middle of the room.
Use your common sense and your intuition as a rule here. You’re not sure about something - ask other practitioners for advice; if you’re not comfortable, if it doesn’t feel right - don’t do it. At the end of the day, this is your classroom and your kids, and you are responsible for them all.
Guideline #4 - Try to confine
Ideally, learning corners are surrounded with 3 ‘walls’. This is how I was taught and explained to do. But for different reasons, it is often not possible to make this happen; and if that’s the case with you and your classroom, I would again say, use your common sense. As long as the learning corner has a feeling of being separated from the other neighbouring corner, has a comfy ‘being inside’ atmosphere and the kids are playing in there full steam ahead, it‘s all good! You have a learning corner.
Guideline #5 - Understand the implications of the size of each learning corner well
Another feature of a learning corner you kind of have a control over and should think about when organizing and managing these in your classroom, is the size of it. Truth be told, the size will very much depend on factors such as the overall size of the room and the number of corners you are planning to have in total, or even the repertoire of the resources that are at your disposal. But the key point here is that the size of an individual corner will decide on the number of children playing in each of them.
What that means is this: the larger the corner, the more children can fit in. The more children you’ve got in one place, the more they need to cooperate and communicate. The more they interact and talk, most likely you’ll be faced with noise in your classroom.
Also, a large number of children playing in one learning corner relates to another possible issue, and that is having more samples of the same item/toy at their disposal (see Guideline #7).
Guideline #6 - Pay attention to the carpets
As funny or even silly as it might seem to be mentioning this, because it’s probably rather obvious to you as it is to me, but it still might be worth noting: is that at one point you’ll have to pay attention to the carpets you have (or don’t have) in your classroom as well as the dining tables and nap time beds/mats. For practical and hygienic reasons, you cannot have the carpets under the tables, at least not the dining tables. Keep in mind that another place where you cannot have the carpets is within the arts/messy play corner.
Carpet is pretty much a must where the building corner is, even though there are practices with specific type of the building resources that will roll it up or remove it.
There will come a point when setting up or reorganizing the classroom will feel like you're solving a puzzle. There is so much to predict, include in the spatial layout, and make sure is not overlooked. All I can say to this is be flexibile.
Guideline #7 - Have more samples of the same toy item
It is good to have multiple same items or toys for kids to play with. The basic rule says the younger the kids are the more of the same toys should be available for them. Now, this does not mean everyone needs to have a ball of their own, or a doll just for themselves. No way Jose! However, if there is only one very attractive toy available for a group of six to eight kids, they will most certainly quarrel over it more often than not. And while they do need to learn or get used to waiting for their turn, you also need to be aware that if these are some really young children, the ability to delay gratification is only beginning to emerge so be mindful about this.
Guideline #8 - Make sure everything is at a child’s eye level not yours
Everything you wish for children to notice, whether it is on the shelves or up on the wall, should be at their eye level. Test it on yourself. How well can you notice or read the text that is below your eye level or is so high it breaks your neck? You will give up soon or you will not even notice it.
Have you ever been to Heathrow airport? Have you noticed how you just slide through the airport’s hallways without stopping? (It does not happen at every other airport!) I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I believe, whoever was responsible for setting up those signs up there, had a pretty good idea about how focal point and visual reading works. In my opinion, this is how educational posters or anything along the line of signs and indicators in classrooms should work. If positioned properly, they inform and teach, do not distract or attack. This requires some thinking and thorough planning on your part.
So, if something in the classroom is placed high up on the wall, I will assume it’s intended for you and me to notice or read. Anything placed below our eye level is for the kids.
Guideline #9 - Keeping it within their reach
Accessibility of resources works in a similar way. Anything placed within the reach of a child will sooner or later be picked up by them, and that’s ok, that’s something you want as an educator.
This rule is about developing children’s independence and trust.
You can have scissors and fresh paint accessible in the classroom to a group of 3-year-olds, for example. I did. Your children are able to learn which resources they can get and use on their own without informing you about it first, and for which they’d have to let you know before taking them out. They really can learn but only if you give them the opportunity to do so, and more than anything you must want to teach your kids something like this.
Guideline #10 - Have a place for one
A corner for one is a place to retreat from others, to isolate oneself and rest from the noise to sort of take a break from everyone and everything.
Ideally, it should be attached or placed next to a quiet learning corner such as the picture book corner, reading or writing corner.
In the literature, this type of a corner is also known as a breakout space, a break-out room, think-tanks, etc.
And finally…
Guideline #11 - The crown of the kindergarten classroom set-up is independence
A child’s ability to act independently is the underlying reason for everything you do and the way you organize it. Firstly, you want the kids to come in on their own and choose something from the shelves that interests them personally. Secondly, they’re making their choice by taking that something from the shelf by themselves and putting it back by themselves. Everything is at their eye level, appropriate and guiding so they learn their way around the classroom quickly. The rules of sharing and playing with others are also something that very soon becomes clear in a well organized classroom environment. In there there’s always room for mistakes and mess, but when kids understand how things can be recovered and fixed you can be certain they will do it, all by themselves of course.
The advice I myself still use before setting up or changing anything in the classroom, is that I look at it through the lens of independence and check if the thing I am doing is going to enable my kids to use, do or even understand things in the classroom by themselves.
To be continued…
Good luck to you all guys with setting up, organizing and reorganizing your kindergarten classrooms.
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