Play+Time!

Play Time! The biggest, most important part of preschool is play time! However, on the surface, it only looks like play time. Research shows that children, particularly young children, learn a great deal through playing. So, in preschool, every activity we do is designed to capitalize on that learning through play. Every classroom is structured differently, so I can only give an overview of how my personal classroom works.

In my classroom, I have designed my day to maximize learning potential through the whole day. In the morning, my students doing activities that I have designed based on the Early Learning Standards Framework. Each activity covers a certain standard, or a number of standards. We first do four to five stations that are teacher-directed. This means, I have pre-planned what the activity is, what standards it covers and which students will be starting at which activity. Each activity takes the students 10-15 minutes to complete. This is about all the time the students can handle focusing on one thing. When majority of the students have completed the activity, we rotate to another station and new activity. My activities vary from day to day, but every day, we have at least one activity that focuses on a mathematical skill and a language arts skill. These two stations usually require adult assistance from myself and my aide. The other two to three stations cover one of the other seven domains: science, the arts, social and emotional development, and physical health and development. These stations usually only require a brief run-down of the directions and the students work independently.



After the teacher-directed stations, the students have free choice stations. I draw names from my name jar, and four or five students choose the activities we will do next: one activity per table/station. Because every manipulative and activity in my room focuses on at least one of the standards in our learning framework, I have no concerns with letting the students choose their activities. Plus, as part of ECERS, students are supposed to be given a lot of choices on what THEY want to do throughout the day. This is one way I meet that criterion. Once the students have chosen the next round of activities, I put their names back and draw names at random, allowing each student to choose where they will begin. The stations, again, last 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the activity, and we rotate at the end of the time, giving each student a chance to do each activity. During these activities, because they are all usually activities the students can do independently, my aide and I walk through the room, asking how and why questions, encouraging the students to expand on their work and their answers, as well as monitoring for disputes and disagreements.



In the afternoons, we have recess (during good weather) and free play. Free play is the part of the day the students look forward to the most. This is the part of the day where every area of the room is open to the students to choose where they want to play and with whom and what. Free play lasts anywhere from an hour on nice days when we can also have recess outside, or two hours on bad weather days. The students are free to move around the room and play with whomever they please. To control group sizes, each student has a tag with their name on one side and velcro on the other. At each area, there is a tag board with 2 to 4 pieces of velcro on it. If a tag board is full (all the spaces of velcro are covered with name tags), the students have to go to another an area to place until a space opens. During this time, my aide and I wander the room, playing with the students, encouraging conversations on their play and facilitating disputes.