🍄 Transitions between activities

Transitions Between Activities

Transitions require young children to put forth great amounts of effort, not only physically, but emotionally, socially, and cognitively, across all areas of development.

• During transition time, children often spend much time waiting (e.g., wait until everyone has finished snack).
• Some children (and adults) have stressful and frustrating experiences during transitions between activities (e.g., children arguing over who took out what toys and should put them away; children not knowing where to put certain  toys when they are done with them)
• Skills such as cleaning up toys and lining up may reduce transition times and may lead to more time for children to become engaged in learning activities.

Supporting Transitions Between Activities

Children transition better when they are prepared: They know what is about to change, they know what they will need to do.

Strategies to support transitions include:

• Plan your daily schedule to include the minimal number of transition times possible.
• Consider what the children and Educators will do during these times (e.g., which Educator is responsible for greeting the children and who will begin looking at books on the carpet with children?).
• Prepare environments that support transitions - Consider how environments can be arranged as well as what materials in the environment will support transitions.
• Use visual cues - Post on the wall somewhere convenient to show children their daily routine. Get them involved by sticking the pictures with velcro and getting the child to peel them off each time they finish a task.
• Prepare for changes in advance - When you help a child transition between activities, make sure you have their attention, with eye contact, then use a calm firm voice to let them know when the change is coming. Say things like ‘Lunch time is in 10 minutes”.
• Give constant updates - Repeat the same short sentence you used earlier, e.g. “Lunch time in 10 minutes”, then “lunch time in five minutes” and so on. When time’s up, let children know with a firm command. Providing a bridge between the activities will help to ease the stress at moving from one to the other.

During The Transition

• Sing songs, play word or guessing games, recite rhymes, or do finger plays with children so that the time passes more quickly when they have to wait for long periods of time for new activities to begin.
• Plan a gradual increase or decrease in the level of activity (e.g., outdoor play followed by snack) and a good balance of active and quiet play (e.g., group time followed by story time)
• Allow children adequate time to finish projects or activities so they do not become frustrated by activities ending too soon
• Plan something for those children who finish an activity quickly so they are not waiting without something to do (e.g., if some children finish cleaning up and getting to large group quickly, might they look at books while waiting for other children to finish cleaning up?)
• Allow children to move individually from one area to another area when they complete an activity (e.g., as children finish snack, they are encouraged to go to the carpet and choose a book; as children finish putting away their coats and backpacks, they are encouraged to get a puzzle).
• Teach children to help others (e.g., have children move as partners from one activity to another or ask one child to help another child gather his/her backpack).
• Help children self-monitor during transitions (e.g., children can be asked to think about how quietly or quickly they moved from one activity to another).