TickiT Classroom Essentials by Agata Marciniak

As an Early Years teacher and mum of two boys I am always on the lookout for good quality resources and items which will interest and challenge children. Through observing children’s play and tuning in you can find out what children like to play with and how they like to play with their toys. TickiT Education offers such a variety of open-ended resources, ideal both for classroom and home environment.

I hope you will like the guide to my TickiT classroom essentials:

Loose Parts Area/ Construction/ Small World

Rainbow Architect Set and Natural Panels offer such an open-ended opportunity to build houses, tunnels, bridges and encourage planning and designing. Children can put their ideas into action independently, develop their language and imagination.

By adding open ended resources such as Wooden Community Figures or Wooden Trees, children will often start creating their own stories.

I love how Woodland Trees and Wooden Community Figures are beautifully made naturally and the figures can be any character you like: from the troll, to a ghost or a fire fighter.

Treasure loose parts and tinker tray are another great addition to extend this area even further.

Activity Idea 1- Loose Part Faces

For this activity you will need:

Placements mats or Vinyl’s, CD’s, coasters or empty frames
Wooden Sorting Tray
Wooden Treasures

Leave placements and empty frames for children to create their own faces. You can provide mirrors for children to see their expressions.

Questions to ask: How do you feel? What can you see? How many ears do you have? Where are your eyebrows? Etc

Activity Idea 2 - Build a ball run

For this activity you will need:

Rainbow Architect Set
Natural Panels
a ball

Children will love creating their own ball run. You can add other resources to make a track for the ball. On this photo we’ve used Wooden Community Figures.

Ask a child to roll the ball on top and then roll the ball underneath. Which way is easier?

Maths Area

There are many Maths learning opportunities with TickiT resources. I like to set up an invitation every Monday to challenge children and see what they will do with the resources themselves. We also like to link activities to specific stories, which we read throughout the week. TickiT blocks and numbers offers plenty of mathematical interactions and they can be set up every time in a different way.

Shapes

Tips: TickiT Rainbow Block Set and the Rainbow Architect sets are ideal to explore shapes in an interactive way. Add loose parts like chickpeas or rice to explore the shape of each block separately.

Numbers

Tips: Plastic number sets go well with whiteboard markers. You can draw on them and easily wipe them off. Pair them up with TickiT loose parts to encourage independent counting.

Home Corner/Role Play

The set of Wooden Sorting Fruit & Vegetable Crates and Wooden Lacing Fruits are super tactical and very handy to have in the role play area. Lace provided extends this activity further and children are developing their fine motor skills and mathematical concepts, such a counting or pattern making.

Activity Idea: Setting up a Fruit & Veg Shop

Open a shop with this brilliant set of fruits and veg. They will provide plenty of open-ended play possibilities. It is also fun for adults to join in as a customer or a shop keeper and facilitate the play even further by modelling language.

TickiT Wooden Sorting Fruit and Vegetable Crates

Sensory/ Light Area

TickiT offers plenty of amazing sensory resources. When my school decided to invest in light table I knew that TickiT has a brilliant selection.

In our cozy area we like to use the Sensory Reflective Buttons for children to look at themselves or Mirror Block Set to explore their feelings and emotions.

Activity Idea 1- Light Panel

A light panel is a great enhancement to any Early Years provision. Rainbow Gel Number Fish and Rainbow Gel Alpha Boats gave children so much joy for creating CVC words and exploring big numbers independently. I also like to use them to challenge children and sometimes I hide one fish and children have to find out which number fish is missing.

Activity Idea 2: - Colour Sorting

The Rainbow Wooden Bowls are perfect for colour sorting activities. This time we used coloured chickpeas to sort the beans into separate bowls. I really like the size of TickiT bowls, they can also stack on top of each other for an easy storage.