Tidy up time with pre-school

Tidy up time with pre-school

by: Guider-too - 08-02-13 23:37

Any tips please?

Currently working as Out of School - but also two part days in the pre-school age. We sort of share a room and at the end of the day it is becoming a bit tiresome to be tidying it all away.

The current staff are wonderful - don't get me wrong, but both very soft spoken and the children are not seeming to take notice of them.

They do use the Barney Song (sung not on CD) and the children seem to enjoy joining in the song - but not the actual tidying up.

After being in the room for a few hours today I got rather fed up of constantly returning items back to their areas (role play out of the sand etc).

As for tidy up time itself - to be faced with a smirking 3 year old who would not pick up the toys was not good for the blood pressure. So far I have tried to get the 'bossy one' of the room (if you get my meaning?) to champion them into getting the others to tidy up, praising him and saying whoops your friends are not tidying....you are the only one....can you ask them to help? They just stood and laughed in his face. Poor thing was devastated.

The setting is fairly new and I understand that boundaries are being set - but would love some guidance on how to enagage the children into helping out.

by: jennie

In my 4-5 year olds room i use several strateies to get the children to tidy up:

Firstly 5 mins before tidy up time I or one of the children turn over a 5 min sand timer and walk around the room expaining that it is nearly time to tidy up. This gives the children fair warning so they can finish their games and save any constructions they have built by placing their photograph next to it, this means that when it is tidy up time they are less likely to still be involved in their play. When the timer runs out i again walk around the room and show them that the timmer has finished. usually they will begin tidying up. This strategy (as with any strategy) need using regulary and consistently. 

another way we sometimes use (especailly out in the playground) is gathering all of the children together, so that they stop playing, and then we ask for volunteers to tidy each different area. Again this stops the play before we ask the children to tidy. we sometimes give a time linimt or say "see if you can tidy before i count to 100" this turns the task into a game and often speeds up the tidying. 

Whatever you try you shoud choose one strategy and have all staff use it in the same way, it takes 21 days to change a bad habit (to change to the way our brains work). 

good luck!