Hanging Clothes

Over the years I have tried various methods to store the dress-up clothes in the playroom.  Bins seem to be the easiest for the children to use to put the clothes away but they have other issues.  Bins take up a lot of space - something we don't have a lot of.  Smaller children have difficulty reaching to the bottom of the bin and it is often difficult to see/find the item you want when all the clothes are jumbled together in a bin.

I have occasionally used hooks to hang the blankets and dress-up clothes but found plastic hooks often break and metal ones sometime get caught on the fabric and tear the clothes.  I also have some safety concerns about using hooks especially around infants and toddlers.

So, most often I have used hangers to store the dress up clothes;

 

All the children can easily see the selection and pull it off the hanger.  However, putting the clothes back on the hangers was a frustrating - sometimes impossible - task for the little ones.  The hangers were a favourite toy for many of the children who used them for everything except hanging clothes;

Which of course meant the dress-up clothes were always left strewn on the floor.  Then the older children and/or I would be tasked with hanging everything up over and over again resulting in a lot of grumbling.

Recently I bought a new hanger from Ikea and it has been working very well.

There are no sharp pointy parts.  The hoops are accessible for children of all ages/sizes. The items are displayed to it is easy to find the one you want.  Even if all the clothes get taken out it does not take long to put them all away again.  The only problem we sometimes have is that the children tend to use the top hoops first thereby covering the lower hoops and making it more difficult to hang clothes on them. 

Overall everyone is quite pleased with this new clothes hanger.  There are far fewer complaints about hanging up the dress-up clothes now.  In fact, many of the children use this new hanger for everything. 

Since puppets and stuffed animals so often get hung up here too I've now got another hanger - I just have to find a good location to put it.

Indoor Activity

Walk!

I am certain that if I recorded all the things I say to the children in a day and then tallied up how often I repeat phrases ‘walk’ would top the list.  A distant second would be ‘stop’ followed closely by ‘down’.  All my most common instructions pertain to redirecting activity level.

The list would of course be far different if I made separate lists for ‘outdoor’ phrases and ‘indoor’ phrases.  Only when we are indoors is there a need to restrict the children’s running, jumping and climbing.  It is not the activity that is wrong – it is the activity within a small, confined space with many other people.

Yet, children need to engage in gross motor activities.  During our long cold winters we do go outside every day but the length of time we spend outside is often not enough for the children to release all their pent up energy.  So, I try to provide alternate gross motor activities that are more appropriate for indoors.

When I removed the loft stairs the music area became larger – more room for dancing :-) Dancing is one of the children’s favourite forms of indoor active play and something they often initiate.  There are also some other features I incorporated in the room to encourage movement;

 

The step up to the nature area is a natural ‘speed bump’ and a great place to practice stepping – or jumping – up and down, on and off.  The pipes are mounted high at the entrance to the block area to encourage stretching to drop toys through the pipes and bending to enter the block area.  We do more bending and stretching by practicing yoga poses – another favourite activity that the children will often initiate.

Crawling is also encouraged – it is such a wonderful full body gross motor activity. It is generally much slower than other types of movement and because the children are down on the floor falling is rarely an issue.  The children will often crawl during dramatic play activities when they pretend to be various animals.  Sometimes we set up the tents and tunnels to promote even more crawling;

Recently we’ve had the spinners out in the playroom.  These require an impressive amount of balance to remain upright as you stand and spin.  The younger children always use the spinners near a wall or shelf so they have something to hang on to as they spin in circles;

Currently we have the foam hop scotch puzzle on the floor. The squares provide boundaries for hopping or jumping – the difference between hopping and jumping is described here.  Using the squares to define the hopping area provides a ‘safe’ zone for those who are not engaging in the activity – they can walk around the mat to avoid being involved in a collision.

I may have to restrict some types of active play indoors because I don’t have an appropriate gym space but that doesn’t mean I have to eliminate it completely.  We still much prefer to be outdoors but when we’re stuck indoors we don’t have to remain sedentary.

Variety

Sometimes I feel like I should be writing more posts.  I reflect on why I haven’t been writing.  Have I been too busy? It doesn’t always take long to write a post but if I haven’t got a solid hour of time to commit to it I usually don’t start.

Lack of inspiration?  There is always some type of activity or a change that I have made to our play space but sometimes I hesitate to write about it – again.  Maybe I’ve written about a similar activity with a different group of children.  Also, I make so many changes to our environment sometimes I wonder if readers get tired of hearing about them all.

Mostly, I think it is a matter of ‘not enough’ for a full post.  A cute story, exciting activity or pictures for which the description is just missing something.  Sometimes I just can’t explain in a post what was going on and why I thought it was interesting.

Today I simply have a few photos that I want to share along with just a sentence or two – not enough for a full post for each but things I like.  A small variety of pictures such as this one of the toddlers using twigs to go ‘fishing’ in the snow;

And this one I took when all five of the little ones spontaneously decided to cozy up on the step together and read books;

And when I brought out the sensory bin with sweet grass, dried herbs, and animals etc  and as the children played the 3 year old stopped briefly, closed her eyes and said “Oh Cheryl, I love it – it smells like your garden.”

Yes, I love that too. :-)