Block Centers, Part II

The block center is the messiest area of our daycare. The children are also reluctant to take down their creations most days. Set a timer to give a five minutes till cleanup warning. Make block cleanup easy and fun for the children. Have clearly marked containers, with a picture on them of each type of block, (ie legos, waffle blocks, wooden blocks) so the child readily knows where they go. My group right now is young, so we use the square bucket for legos, and the round one for wooden blocks. Keeping it simple works best for us right now.

Another method used for the storage of wooden unit blocks is to put them on a shelf by size and shape. Trace the blocks on the back of the shelf and have the children sort them and stack them in front of their outline. It's a great learning game. Always allow extra time for cleanup when the block center is a mess. Children may not be willing to quickly take on a task that looks so overwhelming.

Another way to make cleanup into a learning time is to challenge the children. Ask them to put away one certain size or shape at a time. Assign each child a certain size blocks to clean up. We have also used blocks in this way in circle time. Toss the blocks in the middle, and choose a child to find the round block, square block, smallest, largest, red block. The possibilities are endless and learning to follow instructions will make all the clean up and art tasks in the daycare easier.

I've notices that if the children in my care spend a long time on a structure, they don't want to take it down. Many days we've left a building up to show parents, to continue playing with after lunch, and we take pictures of them for the bulletin board or web site with the little engineer standing proudly beside it. I always make a copy to send home, too. When I take them down from the bulletin board, they go in our daycare scrapbook, with the child's name and the date the building was created.

Possibilites with blocks are endless. Get on the floor and play with those little ones in the block center today!Ask them questions about their projects. Lend a hand and help build that tower or super-highway.

Some ideas from this article are from The Creative Curriculum For Early Childhood, some are mine, and some have come through networking with other providers.

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