Tips for choosing basic Preschool Furniture

 A preschool classroom must be essentially simple, calm, visually appealing and clutter free. Dr. Maria Montessori believed that the child’s learning environment should be peaceful and welcoming. It should be clean and uncluttered. Who would disagree with that?

There is choice of wooden or plastic preschool furniture. If budget is not a constraint wooden furniture is more preferable. It is natural and helps to create a more organic environments. Natural wood colours or light colours are ideal, bright colours can distract the kids from the educational material that they work with. Light weight, stackable furniture is handy when it is required make space in the classroom for different activities. Good preschool furniture should not have any sharp corners. They should be practical and functional. The walls should be neutral colors with a very few realistic paintings or photographs of children and families.

Here are some important tip while choosing basic preschool furniture:

Preschool Furniture -Tables and Chairs: It is necessary for all preschool furniture to be child size. A preschool environment ideally caters to kids of ages 2 to 6 years. Children need to be seated comfortably while they do their activities at school. This means that tables and chairs should be the right height to encourage good posture and comfort.

This guide to ideal height of table and chair for kids may come handy in making the right choice. When it come to tables there are various designs to choose from, square, rectangular, circular and even half-moon-shaped tables. The kind of tables you will choose will depend on the size of the classroom and the number of kids. For small sized classroom its preferred to have fewer bigger tables, instead of several smaller ones. Chairs that can be easily stacked are always a better bet for easy cleaning and movement. You may also consider the option of having individual desks or double seaters depending on your learning environment and the activities children need to carry out regularly.

The next big item would be some good storage shelves to store the educational materials like puzzles, blocks, jigsaw, flash cards etc. Choose shelves that are short and sturdy. Kids should be able to easily pick and put back the stuff by themselves. Storage cabinets with smart shelving helps to keep things organized and nurtures clutter free classrooms. For a preschool classroom closed cabinets are a complete NO. They can be safety concerns as the kids can jam their fingers between the door or drawers and also it complicates make the process of getting things out for the kids. Make sure the shelves have no sharp corners. Storage units with bins are super for storing art supplies are other knick-knacks.

How can there be a classroom with no reading corner. However small the space is make sure you have a dedicated reading corner with a petit open face book shelf. Kids need to love books first to be able to develop the skill of reading. Puppets, finger puppets, big picture books are all reserved for this area.

Once you are done with the basic preschool furniture you can shift your focus to purchasing play equipments for indoor and outdoor use, School bag cabinets and Shoe racks.