Clean Up Time

Toddlers

What We Saw: The teacher washes the table off after a gluing project. Some toddlers come to watch, and she gives them paper towels to help wipe the table. Afterwards, she lifts a child up to toss the towel into the trash.

What It Means: Children often enjoy copying adults, even when we are doing chores. They want to participate, imitating these behaviors. The teacher encourages their participation in the table washing, providing just enough assistance so they can succeed at helping. Sometimes it takes more time and effort for the teacher to accept the child's "help" than to do it herself, and the chore may even need to be re-done by the teacher later. That's OK: it's more important to help the child learn self-responsibility, and over time this will save the teacher time as the children become more responsible.

Toddlers

What We Saw: The teacher sees a boy carrying a cushion from the quiet area and tells him to bring it to her so they can get ready for circle time. He drops it, and a girl picks up the cushion and brings it to the teacher. The boy goes to get another cushion and other children begin to help also. The teacher stacks all the cushions on the table and gives the children a five-minute warning for clean up time. She tells one boy "You might want to think about picking up." In five minutes, she dims the lights and sings the clean up song, and the children begin to put away their toys. She goes to the boy and guides him in putting away the toys, saying, "fish go in here, tools go in there."

What It Means: The children learn self-responsibility when the teacher encourages them to take care of their play materials. The teacher uses foreshadowing, giving a 5-minute warning before transition, and reminding the children to put away their toys before they go to a new activity. She creates a group activity out of clearing cushions from the circle area. The children model for each other, and one child helping serves to encourage picking-up behavior in others. One child is still learning about this responsibility, so the teacher uses more reminders with him. She remains close by and gives specific directions for him to follow. This helps him practice this chore until it becomes routine: increasingly self-controlled rather than adult-controlled.

Preschool

What We Saw: There was sand in the sensory table with different sized dinosaurs, funnels and scoops. The children were grouping the dinosaurs by size and counting them. A teacher stopped by and said to the children, "Did you dig for dinosaurs?" One child said that they were "putting the dinosaurs together in families". The children were so enthralled with this activity they did not want to stop at clean up time. The teacher said they had five minutes left to play. As she was covering the sensory table, the teacher said "Let's put the dinosaurs to bed. Say good night dinosaurs. You can see them again tomorrow." The children said good night to the dinosaurs and were able to separate from the activity.

What It Means: Clean up time can be a difficult transition in early childhood programs. Often children are very involved in their activities and are not ready to stop. This teacher was sensitive to the children's high involvement. She entered the children's fantasy world, and created an ending to the activity from within the fantasy: putting the dinosaurs to bed. This helped the children complete and then separate from the activity fairly easily.

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