Mat Time Meeting

24/08/2012

      On Monday 20th August, Becca, Erin, Debbie and I had a meeting to discuss our mat times in the babies' room. The aim of this meeting was to improve our mat times, but also to get back to basics and remind ourselves why we have mat times, what we think we are doing well, what we could improve and how we think we could do that. There aren't many professional development courses aimed at mat times for under two's, so we thought we would do our own development of our mat times. It was fairly informal, just the four of us sitting around on the floor throwing ideas around, which was nice. It gave us the opportunity to talk openly, feel free to voice our opinions and also have a bit of a laugh while we were doing it which is always good for the old team morale! The outcome of this meeting was great and I think we came up with some excellent ideas.
      Firstly, we agreed that the main reason we have mat times for the under two's is to prepare them for moving to the over two's. In the over two's room there are three mat times a day and the children have to sit for at least 15 to 20 minutes, so our short 5 to 10 minute mat times are just a small practice day for the main event. It is also important for children to develop routines in their day so that they can predict certain things that are going to happen (Ministry of Education, 1996). This stability is especially helpful with the settling process for children of the age group that we are working with, which is another reason why mat times are useful. We are going to continue putting the smaller babies on their side to play and just doing mat time with the bigger walking babies as we have always done, as this works well. We feel that it is too long to expect our babies under one to sit still for a mat time and there is no need to expect that from them at their age anyway. We also agreed that the length of our mat times (5 to 10 minutes) is great and we will keep it that way, because any longer than that is too long to expect these small children to have to sit still. Especially when we are moving straight to morning tea where they are going to have to sit still at the table for a further 10 to 20 minutes, depending how long they want to stay and eat.
      Once that was established, we discussed what we think needs improving. One thing we all agreed on was that the children will quite often get up and walk around during mat time. Literature does state that if children are walking around during mat time, it is probrably because they are bored and if the child is bored then it is not their fault, it is the teacher's (Goodchild, 2010). If children are bored, the teacher needs to find something more interesting to keep them entertained. This is a valid point that I agree with whole heartedly and this is something that we did discuss during the meeting, which I will touch on soon... In order to encourage the children to stay seated during mat time, we decided to try a technique which Debbie picked up during a recent workshop with Rachel Goodchild. The technique involves giving the children a square of carpet each to sit on, so that they have their own special space. We also decided that we would try placing the carpet squares into a semi-circle, rather than having the children all sitting in front of each other. This will make it easier for everybody to see the books we are reading and it will also make the mat time more sociable because everybody can see each other. The children will also be able to make their way to the front of the mat much more easily to participate in magnetic stories or puppet songs. This is also the way that the over two's children sit during mat time, so it is good for the children to get used to it now. Finally, we decided if there are any children that like to touch things or move around a lot (of which we have a few), then we will try giving them something to hold in their hands. It was suggested at the Rachel Goodchild workshop that something from the earth works well, like a piece of pumice or a nice smooth stone. Admittedly we were a little skeptical of how this will work with our age group, as we wonder if they will just play with the object and ignore the mat time experience, but we will trial it if need be and see how we go.
      In the interest of efficiency, we are putting together a basket of magnetic stories, books, songs etc. that we all agree are age appropriate for our children and we will keep this for mat times. On a Friday afternoon, the person who will be on mat time for the next week will have some time to plan what they are going to do so that mat times are more organised. The aim is to focus our mat times around the interests of the children, while also incorporating aspects of the Early childhood curriculum, for example using te reo. Te Whaariki states that "The curriculum should include... opportunities to learn and use the Maori language through social interaction" (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 43).
      As earlier mentioned, I came across a reading which discussed the importance of making mat times fun and entertaining for children if you expect them to sit and listen (Carol Armstrong, 2007). I even read a comment from a teacher on an online blog suggesting that puppets are good for keeping children's interest when reading books. I thought this idea seemed ridiculous, because in my opinion, if the children are not interested in the book you are reading and can not enjoy the pictures in that book, then you should not be reading it to them. It's that simple. This is the approach we are taking when selecting our mat time resource basket. We are choosing simple, interesting stories that we are confident that the children will enjoy. MacNaughton and Williams (2004) states that repetition is sometimes the key to enjoyement with young children, as they prefer stories and songs that are familiar. This is something that I believe to be true because we have seen it time and time again with our babies, especially when it comes to music and dancing (they only dance to songs that they know, and fair enough too!)
      This meeting went really well and as well as improving mat times, it was a great opportunity for a bit of team building for myself, Becca and our newest teacher Erin. I think that with all of the new ideas and techniques that we have, our mat times will improve greatly and the children will benefit from the extra organisation.