Songs, stories, and photographs can acknowledge the range of young children's emotions. In addition to books, blocks, paints, and manipulatives, dramatic play materials can allow children to dress up and take roles, create their own dramas, and design mini-environments. Dolls can reflect cultural diversity, and accessories can symbolize familiar aspects of family life. Emotionally Responsive classrooms have an area that is soft and relaxing, perhaps including puppets and soft animals, and some well supervised enclosed spaces. They are clean and well cared for.
Children can expect to find desired items in a stable location.
Toys and other learning materials are well maintained and removed or fixed if they break. Teacher-Child Interaction Teachers engaged in Emotionally Responsive Practice acknowledge that they have an important role in the lives of the young children in their care. Young children come to depend on the teacher's availability. They learn to read their teacher's expressions and anticipate responses. The teacher becomes an organizing presence in the life of a young child and may give children their first experience with becoming connected to someone outside of the home.