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The Shrinking Room

by Rae Pica

 When children share space without an understanding that they each carry their own personal space with them, chaos can result. In fact, for young children it’s often more fun to “crash and go boom” than to avoid interfering with another’s movements. Playing a game called The Shrinking Room can help children get a sense of their own personal space and learn to respect that of others. 

Ask each child to step inside a plastic hoop, pick it up, and put it around her waist. Then challenge the children to imagine they’re each inside either giant bubbles or cars on the highway (whichever image you think will work best with your group). Challenge them to move around the room without touching anyone else’s bubble or car. 

Stand with your arms out to your sides, acting as a “wall,” beyond which they can’t pass. Gradually, begin reducing the size of the area in which the children have to move by taking the occasional step forward. Be sure to stop when the children are still able to move around without touching another person’s hoop! 

If you don’t have hoops, the children can still play this game by extending their arms out to their sides. In this case, instead of avoiding contact with other hoops, they’ll be avoiding contact with other hands. 

Either way, to make the game more challenging, once they’ve experienced ample success with moving in a forward direction, ask them to try not touching one another while moving throughout the area in a backward direction (with the back of the body going first). Can they do it with one (and then the other) side of the body leading?