At Tidy Up Time

[Guest]

Hi All,

Would love some ideas please on when it is tidy up time.

The children do help tidy sometimes, but some just run around and stand and dance to he tidy up music. If Ofsted were to come it would look mayham. What do you do with the children who don't tidy.Also how do you go about tiding up.

Thank you.

Dorinda

[Panders]

We always used to use music until about a year ago, and now only occasionally use it, partly because as you say, it can hype them up a little.

 

My routine is to call all the children together first in one place, briefly talk about our morning so far, and the allocate tidy up jobs to certain individuals, who may then ask for some other child to come and help them, it doesn't work too badly, there will always be the ones who just don't tidy up I'm afraid, but we wear them down gradually, and adults ask them questions like, do you know where this goes? and mostly they will take it and go and put it away. We offer the occasional sticker for good tidying, but mostly heap praise on a few at the end of TUT in the hope that the others will take note for the future.

 

YOu could try tidy up teams with an adult in charge, so a team to tidy the home corner and dressing up clothes and another to do, puzzles and games etc., some pre-schools I have visited have their teams wearing team colour bands whilst they do it!

 

I think at this time of year with the newbies, it can be difficult because they just don't really join in well at this sort of thing and some of the others who have returned have probably been the younger ones last term and got away with murder anyway! Learning curve for them all.

[Guest]

Thank you Panders anything is worth a try.

Dorinda

[Guest Biker]

We too used to use tidy up music but found lots of children were too busy enjoying the music to tidy!

There are always the children that will do everything possible not to tidy!!

We give our children a 5 min warning before tidy time.Then we encourage them to tidy the area they have been playing in.Adults support them giving wanderers specific jobs and lots of encouragement/praise.

Generally it quickly becomes obvious which children aren't participating and adult support can quickly turn them into "our best helpers"

Biker

[larnielass]

We gave up on the music idea very quickly too. Barney the dinosaur song drove me mad. Eventually we settled on quietly ringing one of those sets of bells from the music box. We don't make any announcement. Once the children hear it some of them shout out "it's tidy up time"! We use positive praise to encourage involvement but find some children just go off to fetch storage on their own. Here's hoping they do that when Ofsted are present!.................Larnielass

[meridian]

One way which seems to motivate children I find it to use a large puppet who acts as a role model...i.e. tidying up, and comments on other children for e.g. i have an Orangutan named Otis!..he says 'I can see Harry picking up the brio trains'..works really well...

we soon gave up on the tidy up song too!

[Guest]

We have a tidy up song, which involves clapping, most of the children join in and then get on with it.

Obviously this differs from term to term/year to year and there are always some who don't. But on the whole at least they know what they are supposed to do!

 

Rachel