Not baskets, but boxes

The UU church in Plano, Texas uses plastic boxes in their classrooms instead of open baskets. I acquired some plastic boxes to try this out.

This is what I like about them:

• They are easy to clean
• They are easy to label
• They stack neatly and compactly on the shelf
• They are easy to transport around the room/church
• They close up, which might help all the pieces from any one story stay together
• They are inexpensive and easy to find at any big box store
• They seem very durable

 This is what I like about baskets:

• They are visually attractive individually and laid out side by side on the shelves
• They are made from natural materials
• They are open, inviting of interaction
• They come in many sizes, and being open on top, fit many materials without squishing
• If you don't insist that all your baskets match, they are inexpensive and easy to find at the thrift store

Here was my first run at using a plastic box. My main reason for wanting to try this was that labeling the baskets and keeping pieces together was a challenge this year. Also, the teachers suspected that the children did not interact much with the stories because they didn't remember which was which. I'm not sure we're going to want to switch over all the baskets, but I was thinking it might work to group the stories in baskets and plastic boxes. In this case, the "How Stories Began" story, which is listed as a Source story--Wonder and Awe--could be one of several Source stories all kept in plastic boxes and grouped together on one shelf, at least while we try out this new way of storing and organizing stories.

Wall wrap-around

The day has come! We have run out of shelf space and are now lining the walls with stories!

The stories go down this wall and wrap around the one behind where I'm taking the picture. I think they've heard 16 stories this year?

Our classrooms are small, so only the narrowest bookshelves fit with enough room for kids and teachers. This seemed like a perfectly workable solution to end the year out. At first, I was worried the stories would get stepped on or jostled about too much, without a clear "place" or "cubby" that they belonged in. But not so! The children adapted to this arrangement quickly, and since there are more soft and gentle in their movements in this room anyway, it turns out my fears were unfounded.  One new challenge is finding a way to label the baskets; we had settled on affixing the label to the shelf in front of the basket, but that doesn't work quite as well on carpet.

Spirit Play Storeroom

I am so hungry to see other Spirit Play spaces, and Godly Play, too, and Reggio Emilia and Montessori-inspired religious education classrooms. I want to see how they are laid out, and how they flow, and how they are tidied on Sunday afternoons, and where things are stored. Once we get clipping along, I'd love to make a series of YouTube videos on how the classrooms "work" on a given Sunday.

To that end, I'll add here a picture of a shelf in what is now our Spirit Play storeroom. It is not a thoughtfully laid out room, as we rather missed the memo that we'd need a whole other space in which to store not-currently-used stories and supplies, so cobbled it together quickly last fall.

You know, when I first started looking at Spirit Play classrooms online, I thought, man, these folks are serious about their baskets and shelving. And now I understand why! Everything is open, accessible, easy to see, and tidy.

These are about 3/4 of the stories we have built. The other 1/4 is in the Spirit Play classroom itself, on the shelves there for children to play with. The baskets are all donated or purchased at the thrift stores. Each story has a printed-out text accompanying it, in a plastic slip.We still have a great need to label each story basket with a symbol card, and I hope to have the titles and layouts printed on the other sides of the cards. I'm envisioning something like large, hanging gift tag attached with a string long enough that it could be laid on top of the layout on each story. I think that would be a great volunteer job for somebody wanting to get acquainted with our collection...now if only I could find that one volunteer!

...just before the children arrive

There's a special kind of quiet excitement in education spaces just before the children arrive. It's delicious, a mix of loving preparation and hope-filled possibility.