So my group has changed lately with my new policies & I LOVE the group I'll be having full time in 2 weeks. I am having to make some adjustments though b/c my ages are really varied now. I'll have 2 in kindergarten (I teach them here...think experiential learning in a home school environment while still meeting all state standards), 2 in my preschool group, 2 toddlers & 1 infant. I haven't had this many young ones for a very long time. I was finding that there was a lot of dumping going on even from my older ones, but not much playing (at least with the older crew.) The babies dump & play. So I took the idea of Montessori treasure baskets for babies & tweaked it to make it work for us. I took a lot of the toys the babies love like wooden animals, little people pieces, etc & instead of leaving big sets out I chose 4 or 5 pieces from each set & put them in their own small wicker basket at baby's eye level. The rest of the sets are stored in a closet easily accessible to me in case the older kids want to play with them, but now when they dump they're only picking up 5 pieces instead or 30. Much more manageable for this group. Oddly enough, they play more intentionally with fewer pieces. I find that if I store toys in fabric bins where they can't see them, but know where they are then they rarely pull the bins out. If I store the toys on a shelf out in the open or in clear bins then they just dump everything. Anyone else have this issue? I'm trying to find my happy medium

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