Home Sweet Home
The home corner is one area of my classroom that stays throughout the year. I may add to it, refresh resources, or change the layout but the idea of this area being the home corner, stays. Why? My reasons are broken down in two; children and practitioners
Children
‘User-friendly’
I often see beautiful, elaborate role play areas such as florists, space crafts, and vets, which have taken hours of work and a lot of costly resources. In my experience, role plays like this either get played with for a short amount of time, or ‘get messed up’. There could be many reasons for this; the children don’t know what to do or how to play in these types of set-ups. Some children may not have had the experience of going to the florist, for example. This is not to say I don’t provide the children with other opportunities to role play I do, but they are ‘set up’ in a different way. Rather than an area, I go with their interests in the moment. For example, a child comes to you saying they want to be a police officer. I don’t think, right, tonight I need to change my role play area to a police station. There and then I give them the tools to be what they want. We make a police badge together, I give them a walkie-talkie or a phone, a notebook and pen and away they go. I find this way is much more meaningful to them.
They Want It
I constantly review and reflect on my practice and classroom environment on a daily basis. So, over the course of the year, I observe the children in the Home Corner very carefully to ensure:
children are still engaging with the provision
it still meets the needs and interests of my children
The two are interlinked.
To check this, I ask myself, are the children engaging? If they are, perfect. If not, why not? Is it meeting their needs? Have they moved on in their role-play? Do they need different resources?
Developing Skills
Having the Home Corner as a constant allows the children to develop vital skills. They can focus on and refine these skills without having to ‘learn a new role.’ Over the year the children are developing their roles, acting skills, communication, imagination, reading, language, maths - honestly, skills from every area of learning. They can do this in a space they know, are comfortable with, and feel safe in. They are familiar with the space and the resources; this gives them the freedom to develop their skills.
Practitioners
Workload
There has been a huge focus recently on practitioner’s workload and well-being. Keeping the home corner static relieves the pressure of the over-night transformation of a role play area. Creating an outstanding area takes a lot of time so doing this regularly is a lot of pressure (without necessarily impacting on learning and progress.)
Observations Over Time
I find the observations in the home corner I capture over the year are very special and they tell a lot about a child. As above, where I talk about the children developing skills, it’s really interesting and hugely valuable to track these skills over time in the home corner. You can then see really clear progress on certain skills and how the child has developed over the course of the year.
The Whole Child
It is a valuable insight into the life of the whole child. Yes, we do home visits, but interactions and roles are important information in really understanding our children. Children role-play situations that are familiar to them; becoming the mum or dad, cooking, cleaning, feeding the baby. Through doing so, they will not only develop their language skills but they will also explore feelings, negotiate roles, and understand different relationships.
So, you see, for all these reasons, this is why my home corner stays.
For photos of my home corner, click here.