The summer break is a great time to do some tidying-up and rearrange your child´s play and learning space. Having an inspiring and tidy play and learning space has been a gamechanger for us to help our children to focus and to engage in effective learning activities.
Have a look at these 3 tips to help you rearranging a space for productive playing and learning at your home without getting overwhelmed.
Tip 1 > Less is more
Looking at all your toys and materials, the endeavor to rearrange them can feel totally overwhelming. So, start with one shelf or one area of the playroom.
Did you know that children best concentrate and get engaged in focused play and learning when they only have a limited choice of toys and materials?
I know how tempting it is to display all the toys, gifts from the grandparents, new activity booklets, etc., but children get quickly overwhelmed by this choice. They will jump from one activity to the other without focusing and in no time your playroom becomes a big mess. I guess you know what I am talking about. ☹
So, keep toys and materials to a minimum only displaying a limited choice of things your child currently is very interested in. Add a couple of more challenging activities you would like to newly introduce. You can always rotate toys after a couple of weeks. You will be amazed how much your child will be looking forward to playing with them.
Tip 2 > Create space for playful learning
Focused play and productive learning happen when your child can concentrate.
My Tip for you, cluster materials of a similar learning area – for example all coloring books and materials, a box with building materials, a box for animals, create a corner for all language learning materials, etc. Also think about a space on the floor where your child can play and engage in learning activities. You might want to limit it by putting a rag, a floor mat or similar.
Mixing toys and materials will make it difficult for your child to focus on one activity or skill. Children then quickly loose interest.
Make all materials visible and accessible for your child. Everything that your child should not access on his own can be stored in a cupboard and only be taken out when you jointly do an activity. You thereby avoid having to say NO every time your child messes around with them.
Tip 3 > Get into a daily clean-up routine
Believe it or not, children below 4 years old love helping and cleaning-up. We just have to get them into a habit of how to do it without overwhelming them. A daily clean-up routine will help you to establish good habits that will last once your child is older.
A good rule to start with is the following: We always bring a toy or material back before taking out a new one.
Help your child in the beginning and you will see how quickly your child will start doing it automatically.
At the end of the day, engage everyone in a quick 2min clean-up before dinner time. You can make it fun by putting a timer for 2 min while everyone helps to have a clean space before the bell rings after 2 minutes.
And here is my Step-by-Step guide how I am going about rearranging our play space at the end of the summer break.
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Hi, Nice to meet you
Learning and growing up with multiple languages does not have to be hard work. I am Maria, a mother of 3 kids, an development and education expert and Montessori homeschooler. Having lived as a family over ten years in Africa and Asia I know exactly how challenging it can be to get access to high quality educational activities. With my step-by-step playful learning method, I am showing you how to raise little happy multilingual learners with limited time and only using local materials.
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