Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Friendly spaces, Part 2

Floor play areas are an essential and sometimes overlooked context for learning, says Elizabeth Jarman, in the second of a series looking at the kinds of spaces that nurseries need to provide for children.

In some settings, particularly reception classes, learning is associated with children seated at a table, when, in fact, the floor can be a much more productive place to learn.

Floor play is important to children. From birth, they explore most freely when placed on a floor mat, where they can stretch, roll and crawl, uninhibited as they are in car seats or high chairs.

On the floor, the potential of what can occur in the space is greater and more open-ended. Children can really spread out. They can extend their play on a big scale. It can expand round the corner, or under the table. As a context for learning, the floor is one that many children prefer.

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