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How accessible are your art and craft or mark making materials for your toddlers?
What do you have out, if anything, as continuous provision?
I would like to have more on offer, but at the same time I need to protect my house! We do lots of open ended but heavily supervised craft/mark making activities, but it's not quite the same as continuous provision.
I've got a mark making basket that's always available. In it there's a notebook for each child. They're different colours so each child can recognise their own book even if they can't read their name on the front of it. I've then got a pencil case of writing pencils and rubbers, a takeaway tub of crayons, some colouring pencils, stickers and name cards. Sometimes I'll add postcards, post it notes etc. It's quite basic, but the children do help themselves to their notebook and sit writing or colouring.
I've also got magnetic writing boards, a blackboard and small clip boards with a pencil tied to them.
That's probably all I give them free access to. I think it's tricky when you've got a mix of ages. When I had all 3 & 4 year olds it was lovely because I could leave out scissors, glue, felt tipped pens, paint sticks, sequins, glitter etc. I knew they could all use them properly and wouldn't try decorating my walls! I do have another box with all those things in but I tend to only get that out for the older children when the younger ones are asleep.
Everything else is done as a supervised activity.
We have a pot of pens, a pot of pencils, a tub of crayons ,glue sticks, scissors, paper, stampers, chalk and the paint is kept on the shelf but they always ask before getting paint out. One of mine is a nightmare with the pens at the moment as I find pen all over the place but I never seem to catch them in the act :laughing:
My youngest at the moment will be 3 in July, the storage shelf is higher enough to be out of reach for the little ones but the older ones can access them independently.
I have some of those magnetic writing boards on a shelf in the playroom, along with a blackboard and chalk always available.
I have a basket of paper, pencils, stickers, scissors, glue stick etc that is on the 'big' table that the older children can access, although I find smaller children climb to get it! So sometimes it moves up higher. The older children know they can ask for it. At the moment, I have several little ones who just like taking lids off pens or scattering everything or drawing/ taking pens etc around with them! So that's not happening! I love the idea of them each having their own notebook Mouse.
My schoolies can help themselves to multitude of resources in the utility room.
I'd love to have more available, but it definitely depends on the children attending! ( I have a very tall 18mth old and he has the reach of an octopus! Not too mention climbing ability of a monkey! )
They can't reach anything without asking at mine! There some "pen" type toys that they can play with but that don't actually draw if you know what I mean.