Carpets and rugs are the foundation of early learning environments. They establish dedicated play areas such as circle time, block play and story time while guiding the classroom flow and movement. They help classrooms stay clean and organized, and soften the loud acoustics and hard surfaces in a classroom. With so many options available, it can be challenging to know where to start shopping for the perfect carpet in your space.
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For more than 50 years, Kaplan has helped early educators choose the right carpets and rugs for their classrooms, along with the furniture and toys that go along with them. When it comes to making the best choices for your environment, we crafted 4 considerations when buying a new carpet.
Size matters with classroom carpets
The first thing to consider when selecting a preschool carpet is the size of the room. Where will your learning centers or activity areas be set up? How about lockers or storage areas? How do you want children to enter the room and make a smooth transition from home to school? Carpets and furniture work together to define these spaces and enhance the independence and natural movements of young children.
If the carpet you choose is too small, you might run into challenging behaviors as children bump into each other&#;s personal space. Conversely, if it is too large, you may be wasting space that could be used for another activity.
As a general rule for carpet size, you should allow for at least 24 inches of space per child. This way, children have space to wiggle without disturbing their neighbors.
For more tips on classroom design, read here.
Carpet materials determine durability
Preschool carpets get a lot of wear and tear. Nylon carpets are the most popular because they are the most durable, stain-resistant and easy to clean, standing up to years of use as small bodies trample them every day.
More natural materials, such as wool or cotton, are soft and offer a cozy eco-friendly option. However, the natural materials do not have the durability and stamina of the synthetic materials. For a natural fiber rug, you can expect 1-3 years of use from them.
Our Kaplan exclusive carpets are woven with stain-resistant nylon and come with non-skid backing, so you won&#;t need an extra mat underneath. The carpets are also treated to guard against odor, mildew, mold, stains, and static shock, all of which may sound like small details, but become extremely important when we&#;re talking about little bodies and immune systems.
Be intentional with carpet designs
Believe it or not, we see a lot of carpets that clash or are inappropriate for their space: Busy, colorful carpets in the calm-down area, math-themed carpets in the block area, and seating carpets in entryways. When incorrectly used, these carpets create disharmony of the classroom environment, which means distracted children and challenging behaviors.
We recommend that you only place themed carpets where they add to the learning activities designed for those areas. Literacy carpets are great for reinforcing letter recognition and phonological awareness. STEM themed rugs and mats help reinforce scientific explorations. A rug depicting a city scape would be great in the block center or engineering area.
Our product designers think of carpets as the foundational canvas upon which the color of playtime will occur: let the children bring the color and activity to the space instead of the floor coverings overwhelming them with patterns and bright primary hues.
The growing trend in carpet design is neutral and nature-inspired shades and shapes. Building off of research showing the positive impact of nature-based learning, our open-ended carpets are soothing to the eye and do not distract children during class time. More neutral carpets are also more versatile, allowing you to move them to different areas as you switch up your classroom organization.
Read more about why nature-based classroom design matters here.
Safety considerations with preschool carpets
Don&#;t let your carpet become a tripping hazard or source for germ cultivation!
Look for carpets with no-skid backing to keep them in place, or use carpet tape to keep smaller carpets and rugs from sliding around. If you put a carpet on top of another carpet, beware that they may bubble up and create a tripping hazard.
Ensure the carpet is treated to resist stains and grime, and make sure it is made to be easily and regularly cleaned (just don&#;t run the vacuum over the serge, or else it will unravel!). Generally speaking, carpets should be washed with a carpet cleaning machine every six months, but this can vary depending on your state licensing requirements.
Before you buy, check that the carpets passed the Class I Flammability Rating and Indoor Air Quality certifications from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Our carpets all pass flammability ratings and indoor air quality certifications, so they are safe for little learners to walk, crawl and lay on.
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Want a little extra cushioning with your carpet? For infants and toddlers, we recommend play mats for floor activities. These make little messes a lot easier to clean up, too!
Selecting the best classroom carpet requires careful consideration to the size, materials, design, and safety of the carpets. Working with a trusted carpet vendor can help you create a space that supports healthy habits and enhanced learning. Want to see how a Kaplan carpet will look in your space? Try our free room design tool, the myKaplan FloorPlanner. You can even export your designs and turn them into shopping lists!
Sharing is not the easiest skill in kindergarten, and organization doesn&#;t fall far behind! For some children, kindergarten launches them into a brand new world of &#;school&#; where there are lots of expectations like sharing and taking turns. If you also happen to be a flexible seating classroom, then you have an even higher need for supplies that are easily accessed. I want to share how I manage community supplies in a way that&#;s always worked for me and my students.
Very early on, when you set the tone with community supplies and materials, students start to learn that everything in the classroom is meant to be shared (except food, that&#;s on our Class Promise!). Let&#;s break down some basics of community supplies.
I&#;m fortunate to work at a school that is able to reimburse us up to a certain amount for school supplies. Sometime around May, I buy crayons, pencils, and glue for the upcoming school year. I like doing it at this point so that I won&#;t have to stress about it in August. I should also add that we are not allowed to have supply lists with required materials that parents must purchase, so I make sure I buy the basics that I know my kids will need on day one (and go ahead and get anything that&#;s on sale).
Once the school year begins, I get a new set of purchase orders for supplies. This is when I buy paint, construction paper, scissors (if any got lost the year before), Playdoh, Expo markers, or other teacher supplies. We can give out &#;wish lists&#; at Back to School Night once the year begins, so my wish list always includes the 1-inch white binder that I use for our Take Home Binders, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a box of tissues. If I don&#;t get enough binders from all students, I am able to go buy the rest with my school funds.
Once all the goodies are stocked, they are considered community supplies. The only thing that students have as their &#;own&#; is their binder since it goes home with them every night! I ask parents not to label anything that students bring in since we share. I have gotten some doubting questions from some parents (very few) about community supplies, but I assure parents that it&#;s a great way for their children to learn responsibility and organization on top of how to share!
All of our supplies are out somewhere in our classroom besides my few teacher goodies that I keep in a cabinet. I want my students to see all of the things in our classroom as &#;our stuff,&#; not &#;the teacher&#;s stuff.&#; I share every single thing with them (Sharpies, Flair pens, and Mr. Sketch markers included) depending on the situation. So, these supplies have to go somewhere accessible to little kids!
At student tables, we keep the materials they use the most. I have wicker baskets from Michael&#;s (a few years old now) that fit 3 Mason jars and a long, skinny basket from Dollar Tree. One jar holds pencils and erasers, 2 jars hold crayons (I put one 24-count box of crayons in each jar), and the skinny basket holds their table card holder, CARES cards, and Lexia login cards. This has worked really well for flexible seating because students can just &#;grab a jar&#; if they are working on the floor or somewhere else and need crayons or pencils.
All other writing utensils (extra pencils, pens, highlighters, Sharpies) go in a 10-drawer organizer along with various types of paper (blank, lined, journal, and construction). When pencils in their jars so missing or break, I can easily remind them, &#;Go get an extra pencil in the green drawer!&#; This organizer sits right next to some shelves in our class that hold Sterilite containers with all of our other art materials. I store scissors, glue, extra crayons, markers, oil pastels, watercolors, chalk, and tempera paint here.
All of these materials are in our &#;art center&#; where it just makes sense for students to go grab what they need, and everything is clearly labeled so that students can learn how to organize materials on their own!
Starting from the first day of school, I talk to my students about the importance of sharing and taking turns. We talk about the supplies and materials in our classroom being &#;ours,&#; and I start explaining the importance of taking care of things so that we all have the chance to use them. These conversations happen multiple times over the first few weeks of school, typically during morning meeting.
To help keep everything stocked, organized, and ready, I have two classroom jobs that students do in regards to our supplies. Our &#;Pencil Manager&#; is in charge of going around to each table at the end of the day to check if any pencils need sharpening, if any jars have less than 4 pencils, or if tables have too many pencils/erasers. We have a jar by our pencil sharpener for pencils that I will sharpen after school. The Pencil Manager puts the pencils in the jar if need be. They go over to the extra pencils drawer to restock any jars, too.
We also have a &#;Supply Manager&#; who helps with general supplies. He or she will check our supply drawers and containers every day and report to me if anything is empty or almost out. They also help keep the math manipulatives, clipboards, and other supplies nicely organized on our low shelves.
I hope this inspires you to try community supplies in your classroom. It has always worked so well for me that I can&#;t imagine doing supplies any other way!
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