Types of Activity Centers
Materials
Play requires materials that children can use to explore their physical limits, to learn about natural phenomena, to employ imagination and make believe, and to develop language and conceptual understandings. An extensive commercial market offers an array of choices targeted to the needs and interests of young children. However, a teacher must be able to distinguish between items that are flexible and open-ended versus those needed for the development of specific skills. For example, children can use wooden blocks and props such as animals, people, or vehicles to build an airport, racetrack, or space station. But they need writing implements such as pencils, markers, and chalk that allow for their emerging fine motor skills, and scissors designed to help them safely coordinate the motions needed to cut on a line without becoming frustrated.
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Children also need materials that will help them to explore and develop their ideas about both real and imaginary worlds. Teachers can easily purchase ready-made puppets, dress-up clothes, pretend foods and dishes, but a trip to the local thrift shop for pots, utensils, oven mitts, and other items can also provide tools for playtools that children recognize and can practice using as they create scenarios and roles around a theme.
Similarly, many print and online resources are available with recipes for everything from play dough to paint and paste that help teachers stretch their budgets and also generate opportunities to involve children in making play materials. Parents and families can sometimes contribute items like cell phones, old clothes and scarves, or restaurant menus. The Reggio Emilia preschools make such extensive use of recyclable materials that there is a dedicated community Remida (an Italian word meaning “recycle”) center for the collection, organization, and display of such materials as well as for teacher training in how to use reclaimed objects of all kinds for creative and useful purposes (AGAC, 2004).