Working Across 2 Rooms

[sandraab21]

Hi, I'm looking for some advice.....

 

We currently have 2 small preschool rooms in our nursery and have decided to arrange the environment across both rooms in order to extend the space and learning areas available to the children.

 

Does anyone work in this kind of environment and have any advice as to how it works in practice? Any ideas for encouraging the children to access both rooms?

 

Thankyou

Sandra xx.

[Guest]

We have three main rooms in our pre-school. The children have free access to all the rooms during the first part of the morning when we have free play. One room has tables and chairs with table toys, small world play and craft activities. Our middle room has the writing area, book corner and computer sectioned off in one corner. This is quite a large room so we also have the home corner, climbing frame and bikes. Our last room has a creative workshop, with paints, gluing etc. the sand and water play.

We just leave the children to free flow through the rooms and they manage this very well. We don't have to actively encourage them to do this they seem to do it instinctively.

Linda

[Guest]

I work in a sessional pre-school and we work across 2 rooms. In one room we have the main activities, physical, maths etc and we use the other room as the 'quiet room' where we have a 'book corner' with cushions etc and then we either have the 2 laptops (donated by IBM!) or floor puzzles or any activity which is on the quieter side! This works well, especially with new children who can find the noise and choice in the main room all a bit too much!

 

Jenni x

[Inge]

we also work in 2 rooms, one arranged as a quiet room, books, mark making, puzzles, computer etc and the otehr the more noisy play and messy play. we ahve only had this for 18 months and children seem to access areas as they wish to, if the messy area ids particularly interesting or slightly different (we had a texture walk this week, barefoot through all sorts ) this is often more popular for a while but by doing observations we are aware they access all areas during the session.

 

Inge

[Guest]

I've started using 2 rooms again, a smaller room is for adult led activity of the day and drawing or similar. It all worked well on Monday - a very easy day, but today was really difficult! We only had 4 members of staff, one in the small room, 2 main hall and then 1 in the garden for the initial 6 that went out. It all went wrong from then really. We had to abandon the small room to keep ratio's up outside. We just seemed to be chasing our tails all day! It was a beautiful outside, so we all wanted to be out there really. We didn't get much of the focus activity done, but some children did want to do it, but we were trying to work in 3 areas. I'm hoping it was the fact that we were a staff member down and will be until after Easter, but it seemed more stressful today than usual and we came away feeling as if we hadn't achieved much! Saying that though the children were all involved outside, so it wasn't the end of the world that our session didn't go to plan (I prefer it that way!!), but I did feel sorry for the ones that were waiting to do the activity. We tried to set it up outside, but the paper flew everywhere!

We also found even with 5 members of staff there on one occasion, one of us was called out to take a child to the toilet, 2 in the garden another changing a child because he was wet, so the remaining staff member was in the doorway connecting each room for a few minutes. we weren't happy with this, so how do you work it?

[Guest]

we have two rooms as well and find it quite difficult to manage. Working in a special needs school the ch dont tend to play independently as well so need more support adn with only 3 adults sometimes this can be difficult with the 2 rooms. we have been using them all together at different times of the day but I think this is more confusing for the ch than justhaving 1 room and with only 8 kids we dont need the space. thing is most of the toys and things are in one room and so we tend to play in there adn hvae our focussed activities in the other room but the smart board is in the 'playroom'. its confusing for me let alone the ch!!

 

if anyone has a really good system it would be good to hear!

 

thanks

jo

[Guest]

I have a reception class of 44 and we work across 2 rooms and outside.

We have a teacher in each room and 1 outside 7 ch from each room can choose to go outside each session. The groups then swap room each session. We have a mix of free play and focussed activites in each room.

 

Lola