Crafts Vs. Open Studio

For the past few years, the Art area in my Kindergarten classroom has been designed with the students in the classroom. There are some basic materials out in the first few weeks, but then I choose to ask the students what materials they need. This honours what they are interested in. It gives them ownership over the materials and the space. It takes away the "pain" of having to clean up the area at the end of each day because every student knows where each material goes.

I make sure to spend time talking about the tools and the materials at the Art Studio. We do have times where I have a lesson to explain an Art technique or an important new tool. Once explained, the students are free to access them independently. For example, paint is always available (I prefer to to use puck paint water colours). The students know how to use the brushes, how to get the water/change water, and how to clean up when finished.

Here are some photographs of the children exploring with paint independently in September. I plan to take some photographs of how I have the Art area set up for each week in September, to see the transition and how it will change based on what students I have in my classroom.

I am okay with a little chaos in their creation!

Stephanie.

Clean Up

"Can we leave the learning area like this for tomorrow?"

This is the question that one student asked that began an entire classroom discussion around our learning areas this past year. When I asked them why they wanted to leave it, they said that they didn't want to forget what they had been doing. Made sense to me and so I agreed but told the student that they would have to share their idea with everyone else during our end of day sharing circle.

Here's where it got interesting. Many students were excited to hear they could keep their work at a learning area. However, on their own they came to the conclusion that it wouldn't work for all learning areas in the classroom.

The playdough and art studio would always need to be cleaned up.

The drama area, math area and discovery areas didn't necessarily need to be cleaned up.

But what did 'clean up' mean?

I challenged the students to think critically about how they would leave their work at a learning area.

Could all the materials be left out?

No, the children concluded, because then the next person wouldn't know where to start. You have to leave it with materials ready for someone else to join in, or for you to continue the next day. A consensus had been made, and next day we tried it out.

Suddenly, students began to write signs to explain what they wanted to leave at a learning area for the following day. They talked amongst themselves during clean up time, making decisions over what needed to be put away and what could be left out. It began an entirely new level of negotiation that did not require adults.

It was very interesting to watch some students adjust easily to this new idea and other students struggle with it. There were a few students who prided themselves as being 'good cleaners' who always went to different learning areas and cleaned them up. Suddenly, they couldn't do that anymore...they had to listen to others and negotiate where they could help instead of simply coming in and "cleaning up".

Here are some photographs of how the learning areas were left by students under this new idea of cleaning up our classroom.

Stephanie.

The Drama Area

The Light Table

The students had created their own learning invitations.

The Walls (Part 2)

Here are some photographs of the classroom layout from this year (2014-2015). These photographs were taken around late October 2014.

At first I was going to label each photograph, but I think it's better to view the room as though you were walking into it for the first time. 

Stephanie.