AVAILABLE FOR PAY & PICK UP AVAILABLE FOR IN-STORE PURCHASE ONLY THIS PRODUCT IS DISCONTINUED This Extra-large Beanbag will be a fun and comfortable addition to your dorm or bedroom. With a durable 100% cotton twill navy shell with reinforced seams, polystyrene bead filling, locking zipper closures and convenient top handle, this chair will have you lounging in style. Extra-large Beanbag is the perfect size for any dorm room or bedroomLightweight and very comfortableSeams are finished with double needle overlock for added durabilityHandy top handle for moving beanbag from room to roomZipper closure features two YKK9 locking zippersMade with 100% cotton twillBeanbag fill is 100% virgin polystyrene beadsColour: navyDiameter: 36" (91.4 cm) Here's what others had to say... Date - Newest First Date - Oldest First Helpfulness - High to Low Helpfulness - Low to HighBags ChairsBean Bag ChairsBean ChairChairs BabySupport ChairBag SupportMaking NewsBambeano BabyBaby Boy Gifts To MakeForwardBaby bean bags or bean chairs are making news around the world.
Not only are baby bean bags a practical and comfy way to have your baby by y... WATCH ABOVE: A Sherwood Park school is putting a new spin on seating. Students in a Grade 6 class can choose from a variety of seating options, including spin bikes, exercise balls, rotating stools and standup desks. As Su-Ling Goh reports, it's meant to keep the kids active. Step into Mr. Davison’s Grade 6 class in Sherwood Park, Alta. and yes, you’ll see desks and chairs, but you’ll also see stationary bikes and exercise balls.“It helps with their focus, helps with their creativity, helps promote problem solving, gives them some way to self-regulate as they have a place to burn off energy or to gain energy if they need it,” teacher Kurt Davison said. Using grants from BP Energy and Dow Chemical, Davison installed spin bicycles that charge devices like smartphones in his class. He also added standing desks, exercise balls and other alternative seating options.He noticed a change in the students immediately.“
If they were at a desk and a chair, they might be fidgeting and moving and that’s what they were focused on – trying to burn off that energy.”Davison said kids still have the option of sitting at a standard desk and chair, which some of his students prefer. But having a wider variety of choice has helped a lot.“It just gives them a different area to sit and to learn,” he explained. “It gives them a bit more ownership of it. They decide where they learn best.”“It gives them a place to fidget and wiggle. And be a kid.”The upgrades have changed the tone of the class and students are enjoying the change of pace.“In other classes, I’m sitting in desks and I’m bored,” 11-year-old Connor Harrower said.“I’m focusing but I’m also daydreaming. With this … my legs are moving. I can just look up at Mr. Davison and focus more because I’m having more fun and burning off energy.”READ MORE: Could standing desks in school be the answer to how to keep kids fit? “I like the bike because if you have a lot of energy you can let it all out,” Grade 6 student Kylie Smethurst added.
“If you don’t have a lot of energy you can gain it on this bike.”The school is hopeful it can use some more funding to equip the Grade 5 class with some bikes and other alternate seating.The Grade 6 class at St. Theresa Catholic School has:Spin bikesExercise ballsStanding desksMuskoka chairsStoolsWobble boardsNew schools in the Edmonton public district offer a bunch of options outside traditional seating:Bean bag chairsRocking chairsMushroom chairsA spokeswoman for the district says it’s all about understanding that not every student learns best while sitting at a standard desk. These options better accommodate different types of learning. They also let kids “self-regulate if their senses get overloaded,” Raquel Maurier explained.Teachers already try to adjust their teaching styles to reach students no matter how they learn. Now, the physical side of the education system is catching up with that idea, Maurier said.In other schools across Canada, yoga mats are being used in the classroom.
READ MORE: Mississauga school incorporates yoga into school day Occupational therapist Shamala Manilall, who is an early learning specialist with Edmonton Catholic Schools thinks incorporating movement makes a lot of sense.She says humans, from a very early age, use small movements to quiet the nervous system.“We can sit for 20 minutes as adults and listen and focus, but for children, that’s much harder. They can manage maybe 10 minutes of focused attention and then they need to move,” Manilall said.“They start to feel a little restless and they don’t know why.”That’s why she says it’s important that learning environments and teachers support self-regulation.READ MORE: Young Minds: Stress, anxiety plaguing Canadian youth“Self-regulation means to be functioning at an optimal level, to be ready to take on the challenges of the day… to be ready to listen and absorb.”And getting active helps that, no matter what age you are.“Movement stimulates the whole brain, it helps us focus, it helps us pay attention.”
It’s a challenge Ms. Lewis-Young is addressing head-on by dismantling the traditional classroom and replacing the rows of hard desks and chairs with bean bag seating, an exercise bike and special stools that allows active kids to sit and wiggle, as well as softening the overhead lighting with filters, and using yoga and dance to relieve tension. The thinking – and anecdotally it appears to be working – is that by addressing the emotional state of these students, by allowing them a chance to regulate their behaviour and calm themselves, they will be more willing to learn. Research suggests that Ms. Lewis-Young’s technique in her Grade 3 and 4 split classroom at Massey Street Public School is on the right path. For kids who learn differently, a traditional classroom reinforces those differences. More variety leads to a better chance of academic success, says Jeff Kugler, an education equity consultant and former executive director of the Centre for Urban Schooling at the University of Toronto.
Launched this school year, the Massey Street school project is the brainchild of Ms. Lewis-Young, and her colleague, Michelle Philpot, who teaches a similar-styled Grade 2 and 3 split classroom next door. The pair were inspired after reading Calm, Alert, and Learning, a book written by York University professor Stuart Shanker, who also heads the MEHRIT Centre, an organization that works with parents and educators to assist children in self-regulating their behaviour. The book explores different methods of helping children cope with stressors. The two teachers received input on the physical changes made to the classrooms from the school board’s occupational therapist before drawing up their proposal. The initiative at the Peel District School Board could improve learning across the country for children with behavioural issues. Massey Street school is ranked “somewhat high” on the social risk index, which measures, among other variables, average household income, unemployment and the educational level of the community.
In the last school year, for example, the main office had 386 visits from students who had behavioural issues. There were 393 students enrolled at the school. Ms. Lewis-Young, who is in her 11th year of teaching, has always searched for new ways to engage students who would otherwise lose interest early on in academics, act out as a result, and risk not graduating. She was once among them. She remembers her Grade 2 teacher telling the class they were to learn about penguins. She wanted to study dinosaurs, instead. The teacher turned her down. Ms. Lewis-Young did not complete her penguin project. Did it matter, she wondered, if students were learning about dinosaurs or penguins just as long as they were engaged in the material? She struggled in school – much like many of her own students. “I was also an out-of-the-box student myself and I know that I would have been successful in school instead of struggling if I had been given choice,” she says. “It’s very powerful when kids feel like they have choice and a voice.
It builds trust and mutual respect.” Evan Grandage is a reserved nine-year-old boy whose intellect seems obvious to a visitor even if it’s cloaked by his quiet veneer. He was moved to Ms. Lewis-Young’s class in the middle of his Grade 3 year because school staff felt he needed a different environment. He was sent to the main office a number of times, and he was suspended for fighting, he says. He didn’t find his schoolwork to be challenging. He has remained in Ms. Lewis-Young’s class for Grade 4. “I thought it was really boring,” he says of his schoolwork. “I didn’t like the people in my class.” “I like school a bit.” At one of the standing tables in the classroom, Evan and a friend are using Lego and electronic building blocks to build a crane that would pick up a Lego piece and move itnew. During a math lesson later in the day, Evan is given a choice of whether he wants to join the group or work on another project. He already understands the math lesson.
He prefers doing origami. Students move freely around the room on this particular morning. They build with Lego or use their devices to play educational games. A student asks if he can play Minecraft. “Not right now,” Ms. Lewis-Young says. But then she remembers there’s a Minecraft coding game. Klint Powell, a nine-year-old with scruffy blond hair and a mischievous smile, slouches on a bean bag chair nearby, using his tablet to play a game that lets him move ahead if he correctly answers the math question. As his fingers move across the screen, he says he’s worried about returning to a traditional classroom in Grade 5. “I had difficulties with my teacher,” he says of educators before Ms. Lewis-Young. “It was just that she didn’t understand me.” Those difficulties meant that, last year in Grade 3, Klint was reading at below a Grade 2 level, a problem that, without intervention, could have intensified through his schooling. Now, he’s almost at grade level.
“I think that because he’s calm and settled in the classroom, he’s not afraid to take risks with his learning,” Ms. Lewis-Young says. “Things are not a battle any more.” Many of the 23 students in Ms. Lewis-Young’s room and the 21 next door in Ms. Philpot’s were specifically chosen to attend these classes because they wouldn’t be as successful in a traditional classroom setting, said school principal Kathy Kozovski. She said that, anecdotally, fewer students from these rooms are getting into trouble. There is still structure, but the primary goal is that students are alert and calm. The concept is winning a small following. Teachers within the school are trying to incorporate some of the physical components into their own classrooms, such as the Hokki stools, a seat with a flexible stand that keeps fidgety students active while sitting still. Educators from other parts of the school board have visited the rooms. “We passionately believe that setting up an environment like this can be successful for all students.