Teaching Strategies – Creating Rules for the Playground

by Educator Partner

Involving preschool-aged children in creating classroom rules can be a powerful way to help children understand why rules are needed, and to support the development of their self-regulation skills. In this video, public preschool teacher Jennifer Wolff describes how she engaged preschoolers in creating and then practicing new rules for using the slide after noticing some potentially dangerous behaviors on the playground. Jennifer reflects on how understanding the need for safe behavior helps children build community and empathy.

This video is part of a series of Teaching Strategies videos – see more at www.easternct.edu/cece/teaching-strategies.

Read Transcript

Jennifer Wolff: Developing classroom rules has been extremely important to me to incorporate the children to own the classroom, and own, you know, their environment. I think they need to understand how to keep themselves and each other safe. We also do classroom rules for outside. So, we’re going to be practicing going on the slide. What are some – raise a quiet hand, if you know some important things about going on the slide. We talked about different rules for each area of the playground. Ella, what’s another rule? Child: One person can go at a time. Jennifer: Great. So, the kids came up with the fact of only one child can go down the slide at a time. So, we all lined up by the slide, and then we practiced that. Good job. When children do come up with rules, or help to come up with rules, they definitely own it a lit more. High five for being safe! Well, those rules don’t just stay in the classroom. They understand that there are ways that they need to keep themselves safe, and keep one another safe. And it contributes to their caring for one another.

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