As a teacher, choosing new items or activities to use in your classroom can be exciting, but also challenging. To promote learning and development in young children, it’s important to incorporate a wide range of materials that are diverse, developmentally appropriate, culturally relevant, linked to students’ interests, and aligned with goals and standards.
So, how do you decide what materials and experiences to include in your classroom? Generally, you start with state-defined goals and standards. These standards provide reasonable expectations for children’s growth, development, and learning. From there, seek out items and engagement strategies that promote skill development, like sorting, patterning, letter matching, rhyming, taking turns, and problem solving. Ask yourself the following questions when choosing items, materials, and experiences for your classroom:
- Do the items or experiences encourage inquiry? Inquiry is at the heart of a curiosity-filled classroom. Items that promote inquiry encourage students to ask questions, make predictions, investigate, and develop conclusions.
- Are items interesting to students? Classroom items and materials should capture students’ interests. It’s also important that items and materials retain their interest over time.
- Do items and experiences consider varied learning styles and preferences? We all learn in different ways. Varying the types of experiences guarantees that visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners’ needs are met.
- Are items durable and easy to clean? This may seem obvious in an early childhood classroom, but providing items that are long-lasting and easy to sanitize keep students’ health and safety at the forefront.
As a turnkey solutions provider of interactive, fully immersive educational environments, the team at Exploration Zones by Exhibit Concepts® provides materials and activities for schools that are open-ended and can be used in a variety of ways. We help teachers get started in using the items and empower them to think of additional ways to use materials. Our educator guides include lesson plans and activity ideas incorporating learning domains that work alongside established curriculum. An intentionally planned collection of classroom materials fuels endless possibilities for exploring and learning!
Colleen Incandela
Colleen Incandela is an Education Specialist for Exploration Zones. She brings more than two decades of child development experience to her role. Before joining the team, Colleen started her career as an educator before moving on to become an Assistant Principal and later Program Manager for Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
