I don’t have a kindergarten classroom of my own. Next year
while I will be working with kindergarten students and teachers I still won’t
have my own room. One of the things
about not having your own space means you are a guest in the classroom spaces
of others. It is a delicate dance being
in the space of another teacher and their students.
I was lucky recently to spend the morning observing two
groups of students who share one classroom.
It was a busy day, like every day, there were places to go and things to
do, library program, trip forms to be distributed, a newly arrived students
(just his first week of school) to be reminded he was safe and so on and so forth. In the time I was
there the students played outside in the sand; they built with blocks, the
moved materials from one centre to another and decided when to have snack, and
everything in between and all in the name of learning.
I noticed that the classroom did not have much in the way of toys, it had
materials. I did not ask the teachers about this but it did come up organically
as we talked about full day kindergarten and all the great advantages we think
it will have for the students (and perhaps some concerns too). What was clear is that in this classroom the
students are not missing toys, thinking of toys or wishing they had them. The materials available are open ended and
they provide such a wealth of learning opportunities, opportunity without
limit.
It is such a privilege to observe students on their learning journey as the discover things about the world using open ended materials.
I have included a link to an article that I think speaks to the
richness of life with fewer commercial toys called "The Boy With No Toys" by Laura Grace Weldon.
What are your thoughts?
