PLAYING CORNER AT HOME/ IN SCHOOL

Learning corners and Developmental Domains

Learning corners and developmental domains

Learning corners are a powerful place that promotes critical thinking, problem solving, turn taking, waiting, improving vocabulary and social skills. Learning corners helps with the development in all the domains.

  • Physical development i.e. Gross motor skills and Fine motor skills can be enhanced in music corner, blocks corner, dramatic play corner.
  • Language development can be seen in reading corner, music corner, dramatic play corner, games corner, science/ experiment corner, math corner.
  • Cognitive development can be seen in reading corner, music corner, dramatic play corner, games corner, science/ experiment corner, math corner, blocks corner
  • Socio-emotional development can be observed in reading corner, music corner, dramatic play corner, games corner, science/ experiment corner, math corner, block corner.

As you can see, the development observed is all interdependent. All the corners cater to the development of all the domains. Hence setting up learning corners that cater to all these developmental skills is very important. 

At home:  For young learners who are at home, a separate corner helps them learn about routines, rules, and self-regulation. Children while at home may find the separate learning space interesting if there are materials that are easily available for them anywhere. Hence, we have to realise that placing expensive materials for play may offer a new perspective to learning but if this learning is restricted to only the materials on display, it can stunt the learning process. Hence having a combination of readily available materials at home and other branded colourful materials would help the children enjoy and continue their learning process.

At school: Learning corners play a very important role for the facilitator and the learner as well. Having dedicated spaces for different types of activities helps the classroom be organized and manageable. 

For example, placing a block corner, dramatic corner, math corner, music corner, reading corner and an art and craft corner in the classroom, is easier for the facilitator to conduct activities based on the theme or the learning outcome. 

Let us take an example of a facilitator who has planned dedicated learning corners for her students. It is important that she/ he plans and organizes the learning corners so that they can easily move from one corner to another with sufficient time to explore in each corner.