Overview

Use this Play Support Form to plan thoughtful changes to your child-led play environment.

In a playful early learning setting, caregivers become support staff responsible for managing the play environment–assuring children have access to what they need to lead their learning. With practice, many seasoned practitioners do this kind of planning on the fly–making changes to the space, altering the schedule, offering materials, and more throughout the day as the interests and needs of the kids change.

This form is designed to help practitioners who are not comfortable doing such planning in their head or on the fly. It’s a simple document that’ll serve as training wheels for folks interested in building more play-friendly environments.

Using The Play Support Form

Start by entering your name and the date. This information is helpful if you work as part of a team and sharing information. It’s also helpful in documenting learning as time passes. You can, for example, go back and review past forms to track how the interests of the group have evolved over time.

Use the first big box to list the current interests of the kids in your setting. The things they are playing, doing, and talking about. Play comes from within the child, so knowing what they are interested in is important. Anything could end up in this box–zombies, kittens, Death, cars, babies, gravity, unicorns, snow, Round, peas, addition, Purple, etc.

In the second big box on the first page, list items you can add to the space that may support the above interests. For example, if kids are interested in the concept of gravity, adding ramps, catapults, and stuff to throw or drop to the play would be a good idea. Having a variety of loose parts on hand makes this easier, since they can be used in multiple ways. Check out our collection of loose parts ideas if you need to expand your collection.

On to page 2. The next box asks for ideas on altering the environment to support the children’s interests. This could include storing away items they are not interested in or moving furniture around to create more open space for large body activities. For example, if the kids are really interested in zombies, it may help to move the tables to the sides of the room and put down tumbling mats to support the chasing and brain eating that’s likely to occur.

Next, consider your schedule. How can it be altered to better support the interests of the children? Would more outside time help? Would serving morning snack a bit earlier help, since a couple kids get hangry about 9:30am and disrupt the play of others? Could you create bigger blocks of time for free play? You may not have control over some part of the daily schedule, but anything you can do to make the day more play-friendly is beneficial.

Lastly, how else can you be supportive? This may mean providing relevant, requested, and timely direct instruction on a topic or skill–say Tuomas is interested in how to use a hammer to pull out a nail. Or it may mean educating parents or coworkers about a particular type of play. Time and resources are always in short supply, but do what you can to think outside the box (and maybe your comfort zone) when considering this question.

The form is filled out–congratulations!. Now, get to the doing. Make it happen.

The Play Support Form PDF

Here’s the free PDF–ready for downloading:

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