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

Reply

This is exactly what I've started doing. I've put my toys with pieces away. They get one box at a time. We still have plenty of toys to play with, dolls; blocks, etc. but my magnet dolls with 500 pieces, the big puzzles, our games, all of it is put on a shelf that they're not allowed to access themselves. They may ask for something on there, then they sit down and play with it, put it away and move on.
I have mostly young kids and I was so tired of cleaning up the messes and having to reorganize everything myself, so I eliminated that.

Reply

There is a post on here somewhere about velcro in the bins down. I'll try to find it...

Reply

These are the threads with bins and Velcro: https://www.daycare.com/forum/tags.php?tag=velcro

Reply

They play intentionally with fewer pieces.
I think you hit the nail on the head with that sentence. I need to downsize all my stuff. Instead I just keep adding to it. 'Tis yard sale season ya know.

Reply