Is TV in Transitional Kindergarten (TK) Classrooms OK? A Teacher Explains What Actually Happens
Last Tuesday, I was wiping goldfish crumbs off my circle time rug and greeting kids at the door when Mia’s mom pulled me aside, voice low like she didn’t want Mia to hear. “I saw your classroom Instagram story last week, and I noticed your TV was on during centers. I’ve been wondering—do you leave it on a lot?”
I’ve been a TK teacher for seven years, and this question never used to come up until the district started letting us post little snippets of our days online. Before that, most parents never saw what happens inside our classroom walls between drop-off and pick-up. The TV in question is a beat-up 42-inch smart TV a parent donated three years ago, after their family upgraded. I’d initially planned to use it for showing circle time song videos and the occasional time-lapse of our bean seeds sprouting. It wasn’t until the fall two years ago, when I had a class full of kids who struggled so much with transitions, that I stumbled on what it’s mostly used for now.
That year, Javi joined us mid-semester after his family moved into the district. He was four and a half, had never been in any kind of group care before, and he cried through drop-off every single day for a month. He’d hide under the block table, refuse to talk to anyone, and wouldn’t join any activities. One rainy morning, after a particularly hard drop-off where he’d kicked his dad and clung to the doorframe, I pulled up a YouTube video I’d seen another teacher talk about—eight hours of slow-moving clouds drifting over the Santa Cruz mountains, volume turned almost all the way down. I didn’t say anything to the kids, just turned the lights down a tiny bit and went back to helping kids with playdough. Ten minutes later, I looked up and Javi was standing in front of the TV, a bean bag dragged over to his feet, not crying anymore. He sat there for 15 minutes, then got up and built a tiny block tower next to it.
After that, I started putting on similar videos during morning centers and after recess, when kids are all wound up from running around or coming off a hard drop-off. We do slow waves lapping at a lake, a quiet fireplace with no loud music, sometimes even a video of a cat slowly walking through a garden. No quick cuts, no talking, no jokes, no plot. The TV is off 90% of the day—off during circle time, off during snack, off during math and art, off before dismissal. It’s only on for 40 minutes max during free choice, and no one has to pay attention to it. Kids who want to build with blocks or play house or draw can do that, and most of them do. It’s just there for the kids who need a minute to slow their brains down without being told to “calm down” or sit criss-cross and do breathing exercises with the whole group.
I get why parents panic when they hear there’s a TV in a TK classroom. I’m a parent too, my oldest is in second grade, and I limit recreational screen time at home way more than this. The common screen time guidelines most parents know were written for at-home recreational screen time, when kids are sitting passively consuming content designed to grab and hold their attention. This isn’t that. For 4 and 5 year olds, TK is the first time most of them are in a room with 20 other kids, all day, expected to follow rules and share and switch activities every 45 minutes. That’s a lot of stimulation for a developing nervous system. Some kids don’t know how to regulate that on their own yet, and they don’t want an adult hovering over them telling them how to feel. Having a quiet, slow thing to look at for a few minutes gives them a low-pressure way to reset on their own terms.
A lot of newer teachers have asked me how I do this without getting pushback, and what ground rules I stick to. First, I never let it become a crutch—if I’m tired, I don’t put on a cartoon to occupy the class while I sit at my desk. I keep the volume so low you can barely hear it across the room. I only use content with really slow transitions, no quick scene changes that overstimulate more than they help. And most importantly, it’s always optional. If a parent asks me to keep their kid away from it when it’s on, I set up a quiet puzzle or reading nook on the far side of the classroom, no questions asked. For parents who are concerned about TV in their kid’s TK classroom, the best first step is to ask specific questions, not jump to conclusions. Ask what it’s used for, how often it’s on, and if it’s mandatory. Some classrooms do use it as a babysitter, that’s true, but a lot of the time it’s being used as a calm down tool, not entertainment.
After I explained all that to Mia’s mom, she relaxed a little. She said she’d just always heard screens were bad for little kids, and she didn’t want Mia wasting her school time watching TV. That afternoon, she came to pick Mia up 10 minutes early, and found Mia curled up on the bean bag in front of the cloud video, quiet and happy after a morning of squabbling over playdough colors.
Last week, we had a really chaotic day—we had a substitute for our aide, three kids brought birthday cupcakes that sent everyone bouncing off the walls, and the fire drill went off 10 minutes before recess. I pulled up the wave video, turned the lights down, and within a few minutes most of the kids had slowed down enough to clean up for dismissal. It doesn’t work every time. Some days, even with the video, kids are too wound up, and we all go outside for an extra 10 minutes of running around instead. It’s not a perfect solution, and it’s not for every classroom or every kid. But for us, it’s just another tool, same as the bean bags and the stress balls and the playdough. It works more often than it doesn’t.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Is TV in Transitional Kindergarten (TK) Classrooms OK