Why I Love Mat Spots for Kindergarteners

A couple of days ago, I washed all 34 foam mats that I use in my kindergarten room.  The floors in Room 3 had just been waxed as part of the summer cleaning process. I didn't want to re-assemble the dusty, dirty, 6 year old mats on a freshly cleaned floor.  So, I loaded them all in the Subaru, hauled them out and onto our back deck, squirted them with dish detergent and hosed them all down.  After an hour or so in the hot sun, I stacked them all back into the Subaru, hauled them back down to the classroom, and re-assembled the "mat spots" in my Book Nook and meeting areas.

So, why have I gone to all this trouble?  Obviously, I want to have a fresh and clean start to the new school year. But why do I love "mat spots" so much?

I have actually had several different meeting area surfaces in my 31 years of classroom teaching.  In the late 1970s and early '80s, I was a SpEd teacher.  I had a corner of the classroom which had a large rectangular area rug, a couch, and a rocking chair on it.  The rocking chair was for me, the kids took turns sitting on the couch, and the rest of the time gathered on the area rug.  It was a nice, homey arrangement for a small classroom of 8-12 students.

When I became a kindergarten teacher in 1995, I had 27 students in my morning class and 28 in the afternoon.  A local carpet store donated 30 carpet squares for my classroom. Each morning and noon, I'd arrange the carpet squares in a circle for our meeting time.  The kids would learn to pick them up and stack them after our meeting times. I was never really happy with this seating arrangement because the carpet squares got really dirty and ended up helter-skelter during meeting times.

After 7 or 8 years of carpet squares, I had raised enough money in parent donations to purchase a large oval rug.  Twenty or so students could sit comfortably enough around the circumference. The problems were that we seldom have 20 or so students, 5 year olds grow like weeds during their kindergarten year, and many children seem to need a clearly, defined personal space.

So, a colleague told me about her mat spots.  I researched different thicknesses (I like the 5/8 inch ones--very substantial) and let the parents in that year's class know of my 'wish' for mats.  A couple of parents donated the money for the mats and I've had them for 6 years now.

I chose earth tones because I think these are soothing, calming colors.  We all need to create calm classrooms, right?  I like arranging them in rows of the same color so that I can call children to their places and/or dismiss them this way.  Some years I've had smaller class sizes and can keep a row down the middle of 5 across.  I like this because I can have pairs of students on either side of the "aisle."  These pairs of students can be long-term "turn and talk" partners.

A few tips:  Buy a few extra because stray pencils (or high heels!) can poke a lot of holes. Be very firm about not playing with the border strips or remove them altogether. And assemble more mats than you have students so you can provide extra space around those students who need it.