Arranging a Science Area
Teacher: This is the science area. It was a little bit of a challenge because this is a hallway, but we have a nice table close by, and we have materials set up here on the shelf that children will be easily able to select from here and take it to the table and use them. We also have the fish tank nearby. We've really kind of pulled this together into a science area.
We wanted to make sure that all of the accessible materials were safe for infants and toddlers. This isn't just the science area, it's science and math. We have some trains that we actually went ahead and wrote numbers on the top. You can see that you can try to line these up one, two, three, four, five, all the way around.
This string can actually be used to lace these cars as an additional fine-motor activity. But we're putting it up here because we don't want the toddlers to have unsupervised access to that long string. Oh, one more thing I wanted to show you is, we made this nifty little kind of tinkering box. You've got a number line here with the dots showing how many -- what the number corresponds to, the amount.
Inside, you have some magnets, and you have some nature/science items to explore. Oh, we're missing the magnifying glass, but I'm going to add a magnifying glass here. Kids can also hold up the pine cones and see how big they are. They could compare that with how big maybe the marbles are. This is a really multi-purpose activity.
Creativity plays a key role in arranging your learning environment. Clearly defined interest areas can vary greatly between settings. Consider the space you have and the needs of the children in your care. How can you creatively define these areas and select engaging, age-appropriate materials for them?
