Guided Play: Learning Environments and Materials
This is the second in the resources around guided play. The earlier post can be found here with the other resource posts.
Educators guide play by carefully observing children and being reflective and then creating environments, schedules, and interactions that promote learning. How do you create learning environments and providing materials and provocations that build on children's interests and skills? Regularly reflect on your physical spaces and the "stuff" that fills them as you think about children's play and learning.
Here are some reflections related to environments and guided play:
Spaces and accessibility: What spaces are near to one another? Why? What kinds of energy and interactions do my spaces encourage? Do children know where the materials are kept and can they be independent with them? How do the spaces build a sense of connection and belonging?
Interests and delight: What are children enjoying in the classroom (and what are they all done with)? How can I focus them on a concept or skill so they are not distracted? (remember the Thinking Lens questions!)
Culturally responsive materials: How can children see their homes or communities reflected in the materials? How do the materials incorporate familiar experiences? How do my materials serve as both mirrors and windows into new experiences?
How they are playing: What do I see children doing with the materials in the classroom? Do they know how to play with them? What instructions, supports, or guidelines are needed? How can I introduce new materials?
Flexibility of the materials: What is the purpose of this material? Can it be used in more than one way? What learning does it support?
Provocations to new learning: How can I create new opportunities for exploration with provocations, loose parts, or new materials?
How children are combining and adding materials: How are they exploring and combining the materials? What else do they need me to add? How could I change my environment to combine different sorts of materials (e.g. putting pine cones in the block corner)? What kind of play and learning does this inspire?
Kinds of play: Do I have materials in my environment that encourage a variety of kinds of open-ended play (sensory and exploratory play, constructive play, cooperative and dramatic play, etc.)?
Overall development and learning goals: Do I have materials in my environment that encourage play across all the learning domains (literacy, mathematics, fine motor, science, etc.)?
Building deeper concepts and enhancing play: How can I arrange my environment and enhance imaginative play that builds on concepts? How can I add materials that support additional learning (e.g. literacy) in imaginative play? What scenarios or props would encourage children to adopt more mature play?
Help families think about play spaces and materials at home also. Use this list of "no cost toys" and Harnessing the Joy of Open-Ended Materials to encourage families to use everyday objects to play with their children or encourage them to build "prop boxes" for play at home.
Here's an example of a change to the environment to add bamboo to the playground and the teacher's observations of the learning that occurred. Here's a fun example from Teacher Tom that shows how the addition of loose planks to the playground led to a whole lot of play. Teacher Tom observed the play, saw children's interests, and suggested the idea of catapult-painting. How did teachers in these examples guide play through observation, environmental changes, schedules, and interactions?
Dig Deeper:
Observing, Planning, Guiding: How an Intentional Teacher Meets Standards Through Play by Patricia McDonald
Planning to Play: Empowering Teachers to Empower Children (Voices) by Kerstin Schmidt and Noelani Mussman
Designs for Living and Learning by Deb Curtis and Margie Carter
