What TV Use Looks Like In A Transitional Kindergarten Classroom (What Parents Should Know)
Last Tuesday, I was wiping blue paint off a low plastic table, brushing goldfish crumbs onto the floor, when Mia’s mom stopped mid-walk out the door, squinting at the smartboard mounted above my reading nook. “Wait, do you guys use TV in here? I thought TK was all play and hands-on activities.” She laughed a little, but I caught the edge of concern in her voice. I get that question at least once a month from new parents, and it always takes me back to my first year teaching TK, when I thought the answer would be a hard no.
My first year, I’d bought into all the messaging that any screen time for 4- and 5-year-olds does more harm than good, so I tucked the smartboard remote in the back of my desk junk drawer and forgot about it. I only pulled it out once a quarter for parent-teacher conference slides. That changed in October, when wildfire smoke rolled into our valley and the district canceled outdoor recess for three straight days. By Wednesday afternoon, I had 22 over-wiggly kids climbing the back of the bookshelf and building towers out of glue sticks just to have something to do. I dug out that remote, pulled up a 5-minute baby goat stretching video I’d seen a fellow TK teacher share, and hit play.
Most kids loved it—they laughed and copied the goats jumping and stretching, and for five minutes, the room was calm and happy. But Leo, a quiet boy whose mom had already told me he had no screen time at home except monthly video calls with his grandma, covered his eyes and started crying. The bright, fast-moving lights overwhelmed his system, and it took 20 minutes to settle him down. That day taught me that it’s not the TV or screen itself that’s good or bad—it’s how you use it, and how you meet kids where they are.
These days, I use short video clips on the smartboard maybe two or three times a week, never more than that. My rules are simple, and I picked them up after that first year mess. Any clip I use is under 5 minutes. No full episodes, no long movies, no background TV while kids play. It’s always a shared activity: we talk about what we’re going to watch before we hit play, and talk about what we saw after. When we did our pumpkin unit last fall, we walked to the school garden and picked our own small pumpkins, but Javi mentioned he’d never been to a real pumpkin patch. His mom works two jobs, and they don’t have a car to drive out to the farms an hour away. I pulled up a 3-minute clip of a kid walking through a pumpkin patch, picking out a big orange pumpkin, and stopping for a caramel apple on the way out. After we watched, I asked the kids to show me how they’d carry a big pumpkin, and they all hunched over and grunted their way across the room. It turned a lesson that Javi could only relate to through words into something he could picture.
When the local fire department had to cancel their visit last spring because of a multi-car crash on the highway, I pulled up a 4-minute virtual tour of a fire truck that the department had posted to their YouTube channel. The kids got to see the Dalmatian that lives at the station, watch the firefighters slide down the pole, and see how they pack the hoses. It wasn’t as good as having them in person, but it was way more engaging than looking at static pictures in a book. Javi still brings up that Dalmatian when we talk about community helpers, six months later.
I don’t sugarcoat the bad uses, though. I’ve been guilty of pulling up a longer clip to buy time when I’m running late setting up for art, or when I have to walk a sick kid down to the nurse’s office. Last month I put on a 15-minute episode of a popular kids’ show to cover 20 minutes where I had to help admin set up for the book fair. When I came back, half the kids were zoned out, staring at the screen, not talking to each other at all. That’s the problem with turning on TV to occupy kids: it works too well, and it becomes passive instead of active. That’s why the 5-minute rule stuck with me—it’s long enough to add context to a lesson, short enough that no one checks out.
For parents who are worried about TV in their kid’s TK classroom, you don’t have to panic and pull your kid out or send a strongly worded email. Just ask your teacher three specific questions: How often do you use TV or screens, what do you use them for, how long do kids watch at one time, and do you offer an alternative for kids who don’t do screen time at home? That last one is the most important. In our class, I always ask parents at back-to-school night if they have any screen limits or sensitivities for their kid. If they do, I give the kid a heads up two minutes before we turn on the clip, and they can choose to play with puzzles in the block corner or sit with me with a fidget toy off to the side. No pressure, no questions asked. For teachers who are just figuring this out, that small adjustment makes a huge difference for kids who aren’t used to screens at home.
Going back to that Tuesday with Mia’s mom: I explained all this to her, standing by the door with a paint-stained rag in my hand, and she nodded. She said she’d only ever read that all screen time is bad for little kids, so she was surprised to see a smartboard in the room. She thanked me for explaining, and headed out to work.
I still have days where I question if I’m doing this right. Some weeks I use clips three times, some weeks I don’t turn the smartboard on at all except to check the lunch calendar. Last week I pulled up a 4-minute clip of a bald eagle building a nest in a big tree, right after we spotted one flying over the playground. After we watched, all the kids crowded to the window and spent 10 minutes pointing and looking for the nest. That day, it felt like exactly the right call. Other days, when I turn it on just to kill 10 minutes of bad air, I wonder if I should’ve just dug out an extra set of puzzles instead. It’s not a perfect system, but it works for our class, right now.
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