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Teach

Staff members are sometimes overwhelmed by the task of selecting and organizing learning materials. You might see a range of materials in classrooms and school-age programs. Consider these examples:

• Mindy is a relatively new staff member in a school-age program. She follows directions when someone tells her to set up an activity or manage the materials in an area. She does not seem comfortable selecting materials when planning activities for children herself. When she is responsible for designing activities, children don’t seem interested.
• Ramona is a veteran teacher in a preschool classroom. She has held onto materials she likes over the years. She has boxes of materials she rotates in and out. Some of the materials are no longer in good condition. Some of the materials are not considered developmentally appropriate.
• Wallace’s toddler room looks like a page from an educational catalog. He follows every guideline and completes every checklist. He can talk to you about why certain materials are good for children. He blends commercially available materials with items the children create, families bring in, and he finds.

How do you help staff decide what toys and materials are worth including in their programs? How do you help your manager make purchasing decisions? Fortunately, you have the knowledge right at your fingertips. Your knowledge of child development should guide your choices and suggestions.

The materials in each classroom or program should be intentionally chosen with the following factors in mind:

• Cultural relevant and anti-biased
• Developmental appropriateness
• Connection to children’s interests
• Variety
• Link to learning goals

Cultural Relevant and Anti-Biased

Cultural relevance means that the toys and materials you provide reflect the backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences of the diverse children and youth in your program. By choosing materials that validate and empower children of all racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds, staff members build a bridge between children’s home and school lives that will support a strong foundation for learning.

Cultural relevance means that toys and materials you provide reflect the backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences of the diverse children and youth in your program. An anti-biased approach means that you support and embrace the differences within each individual that may be presented. By choosing materials that validate and empower children of all racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds, staff members build a bridge between children’s home and school lives that will support a strong foundation for learning.

Children can experience diversity in your program by seeing positive images of people from a variety of backgrounds. Staff members should provide authentic items that represent cultures from around the world: cookbooks with pictures of foods, fabrics, cooking and eating utensils, clothing, children’s books. Encourage staff members to ask families to bring family photos and to lend the program items from their homes. Stock the library or reading area with books that give positive messages about age, gender, race, culture, family type, special needs, and linguistic diversity. Make sure toys (dolls, markers, paint) reflect diverse skin tones and hair textures and that materials give children a chance to express their experiences and growing knowledge of the world. For example, in the doll area do materials reflect the range of ways adults carry and care for babies around the world (strollers, slings, and fabric wraps)? Are doll-sized equipment like wheelchairs, hearing aids, or braces available for everyday play? Do pretend foods and other materials in the dramatic play area represent all children’s home experiences? Can children and youth explore the ways art is all around them in street murals, local musicians, and cultural events?

Developmental Appropriateness

As children age, their needs change. The materials in your program should help children meet the important learning goals relevant to each developmental stage. Because children develop at different rates, choosing developmentally appropriate materials means providing a range of toys that can accommodate differences between individual children’s skills, interests, and characteristics.

A program stocked with developmentally-appropriate materials fits the child—the child should not have to adjust to fit the program. See the Developmentally Appropriate Materials Guide in the Learn section for details about what children need at different stages in their development. Use the guide to facilitate decision-making by program staff and leadership.

Connection to Children’s Interests

Children learn best when their interests are incorporated. When possible, staff members should provide materials that capture children’s interests and extend their learning.

By considering children’s interests when choosing classroom materials, staff members can make connections that extend children’s learning to new areas. For example, if a few children become very interested in construction during the summer, the teacher could turn a part of the learning area into a construction zone by providing hard hats, shovels, measurement tools, gravel, or toy construction equipment. The creation of this construction zone might spark children’s interest in learning about bridges, which could lead to discussion about rivers or to types of transportation that move through water. In school-age programs, you may notice children have an interest in coding or graphic novels, for examples. This could lead to providing materials related to flip book animations, comic book design, or online apps that allow children to create content.

Variety

Not all toys are created equally; some toys spark imagination and others hinder imagination. You might have noticed that young children are often more interested in the box than the toy that came inside it. Why is this so? Because for a child, the box can become anything. It becomes a drum when you hit it. It becomes a house when you put a doll inside it. It becomes a hat when you put it on your head. The possibilities are endless.

Children learn and explore more when toys and materials have multiple uses. Unlike empty boxes, some toys, such as action figures or dolls with pre-set accessories or movements, can only be used in a limited number of ways. As staff explore open-ended materials, also encourage them to rotate materials as needed. Staff may need help determining when materials should be changed. A box, for example, may be an interesting and exciting novelty for one day; or children may turn it into a prop for extended play (for example, if it becomes a bus or ticket booth used in dramatic play or the block area). Help staff make decisions based on questions like:

• Is the object still attractive, safe, and in good repair?
• Are multiple children interacting with the object(s) each day?
• Are children still coming up with new ideas about the materials?
• Can the materials be combined with other objects in the classroom for more interesting play?
• Are there different, but related, materials that might spark more interest? For example, if children have been exploring water colors would swapping in a different art material build on their interest?

You will also find additional questions to guide reflection in the Apply section of this lesson.

Link to Learning Goals

Perhaps the most important consideration in terms of the materials in your program is the ways materials support learning goals. Provide toys that promote math skills like sorting and patterning, literacy skills like letter matching and rhyming, social skills like turn-taking and problem solving, scientific knowledge, and knowledge of the social world around children. The general rule is that children should want to play with these materials. In this section you will read about how to help staff plan intentionally to use materials and technology as learning tools.

Using Materials to Extend Learning

The first step in using materials appropriately is to understand children’s learning goals. Consider the ways typical classroom materials support important learning goals like those in the figure below:

Using the Internet and Technology as Learning Tools

You will need to thoughtfully guide how school-age program staff use the internet and technology. Applications or “apps,” computer games, and the internet are learning materials, just like toys and books, and your role is to collaborate with staff to ensure that their use in your program supports learning objectives and healthy child and youth development. All children who use technology in your program will need support in learning digital citizenship. This is essential for their safety, and you can review Lesson Three of the Safe Environments course for guidance on supervision and safety of internet and technology use. The Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education defines digital citizenship as, “a set of norms and practices regarding appropriate and responsible technology use… and requires a whole-community approach to thinking critically, behaving safely, and participating responsibly online” (2015). Staff should occasionally do refreshers with children on your program’s specific digital citizenship rules and with individual children who need more help in this area, as needed.

As you coach staff in using technology in your program, consider the Three C’s and accompanying questions developed by Lisa Guernsey:

• Content: How does this help children learn, engage, express, imagine, or explore?
• Context: What kinds of social interactions are happening before, during, and after the use of technology? Does it complement, and not interrupt, children’s learning experiences and natural play patterns?
• The individual Child: What does this child need right now to enhance their growth and development? Is this technology an appropriate match with this child’s needs, abilities, interests, and development stage?

The Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education encourages caregivers and educators to understand the difference between passive and active technology use. During passive technology use, a child consumes the content through watching a video or program without follow-up or an opportunity to connect what they viewed to something in their life. Active technology use involves creation, reflection, and storytelling. For example, a child who has a special interest in cheetahs creates a PowerPoint Presentation using pictures, facts, and other resources. This child may, with the help of an adult or peer model, research facts about cheetahs from reputable online websites or books and insert found pictures to support information about specific cheetah traits. This example of active technology use supports the child’s knowledge of the life sciences, ability to determine fact from fiction, collaboration with peers, and word processing skills. Think about how technology is used in your program. What ways can you support staff so technology use is active, aligns with learning goals and the curriculum, and connects to children’s lives and interests? The following resources may be helpful for exploring effective, active technology use with school-age children and youth:

• Hour of Code: One-hour activities that introduce school-age children to computer science.
• Scratch: Children can code and share interactive stories and other animations. Helpful tutorials and teaching guides for staff.
• Girls Who Code: A program designed to promote careers in engineering for women and non-binary people. Includes guides for starting a club and lessons on women in tech.
• National Afterschool Association Afterschool Tech Toolkit: A series of 10 modules and related activities focused on digital learning.

Model

As you work with staff members and managers, you will need to model appropriate decision-making related to materials. When staff or managers have questions about materials, ask these four important questions (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman, 2002):

• Do these materials reflect and respect the racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and family diversity of the program and of the broader community?
• Do these materials reflect the children’s current interests and help spark new interests?
• Do these materials allow children to play in a variety of ways?
• Do these materials help us reach important learning goals for children?

When you help staff members create activity plans and decide what materials to offer at different times, you can expand upon those four questions to make sure materials are meeting children’s developmental needs. Model reflection and problem-solving skills by asking staff members questions like:

• Are children still interested in these materials? Do they use them often?
• Does anyone seem bored or disinterested in any materials?
• Does anyone seem to get frustrated easily by any materials?
• What are the children most interested in right now? What topic or idea seems to spark their curiosity?
• What materials do you think would take your plans to the next level?

These questions should help staff members recognize when different materials are needed. After discussing these questions with staff members, help brainstorm the next steps. If, for example, a preschool teacher realizes that children are not engaged in the materials she provides about changing seasons but they are showing interest in construction and buildings, suggest using blocks, construction tools, and hard hats and providing books on construction.

Observe

As a trainer or coach, you will have the opportunity to observe how staff members choose and use learning materials. As you watch the following videos, think about the different ways you would celebrate and support teams as they make decisions. First, watch a video to see how programs use materials to reflect children and families’ experiences. What could you apply to your own program?

Now let’s consider a range of ways you could support staff members around materials. As you watch, notice the strengths of each staff member and how you could build on what they already know.