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    Designs for Living and Learning, Second Edition: Transforming Early Childhood Environments
    Designs for Living and Learning, Second Edition: Transforming Early Childhood Environments
    Designs for Living and Learning, Second Edition: Transforming Early Childhood Environments
    Ebook692 pages4 hours

    Designs for Living and Learning, Second Edition: Transforming Early Childhood Environments

    By Deb Curtis and Margie Carter

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    About this ebook

    You likely have dreams for your early childhood environment that are greater than rating scales, regulations, and room arrangements. Designs for Living and Learning has been a favorite resource among educators and caregivers for more than a decade, and this new edition is packed with even more ideas that can be used as you create captivating environments that nurture children, families, and staff while supporting children's learning. With hundreds of all-new colorful photographs of real early learning settings and a multitude of simple and practical concepts for creative indoor and outdoor spaces and learning materials, this book truly is a source of inspiration as you learn how to shape welcoming spaces where children can learn and grow.

    Expanded chapters include new information reflecting current trends and concerns in early childhood, such as the use of repurposed and nontraditional materials, children in the outdoors, alternative ways to think about providing for learning outcomes, facing and overcoming barriers and negotiating change, and the impact of environmental rating scales in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). Two new chapters are included, one highlighting the transformations of environments with before and after photos and outlines of the process, and the other with examples of soliciting children's ideas about the environment.

    Deb Curtis and Margie Carter are internationally acclaimed experts in early childhood. They host three-day institutes and professional development seminars for early childhood professionals; consult with early childhood programs across North America, Australia, and New Zealand; and have written many books together.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRedleaf Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2014
    ISBN9781605543734
    Designs for Living and Learning, Second Edition: Transforming Early Childhood Environments

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      Book preview

      Designs for Living and Learning, Second Edition - Deb Curtis

      CHAPTER 1

      Lay a Foundation for Living and Learning

      Assessing Your Environment

      As you consider transforming your early childhood environment, start with an assessment of the way your space is designed now. First draw a simple floor plan of the room you are currently working in, one you are quite familiar with, or one you imagine using in a new job. As you sketch out the arrangements of the room, don’t include a lot of detail. Provide just enough information to help you use the assessment that follows. You might want to read through the assessment first so you have a sense of the amount of detail that would be helpful.

      The early childhood profession has developed many useful assessment tools and rating scales for programs to use in improving quality. However, the one you will use here is unlike the others. Instead of evaluating your space from a set of standards, regulations, or curriculum models, we will help you reconsider your environment from a child’s point of view. The elements used in this assessment form the framework of a child-friendly space for living and learning; they are discussed at greater length in the rest of this book.

      The components listed here are geared toward preschool or school-age children. The assessment is included in appendix A for photocopying and is available to download on the Designs for Living and Learning page at www.redleafpress.org. Appendix A and the Redleaf Press website also includes one assessment to evaluate your site for family-friendly environments, another for infant and toddler caregivers, and a third to assess the caregivers’ and teachers’ work environment. All of these resources are also available in Spanish in appendix B and on the Redleaf Press website.

      Assessing From the Child’s Perspective

      Put yourself in the shoes of the young children who spend their days in your space. Consider the following statements from a child’s perspective, and use them to assess your space. Write the number of each statement in all of the places on your floor plan where you are confident the statement is true:

      Now examine your coded floor plan. Did you have trouble finding any of these components in your room? If so, you will probably find new ways to think about transforming your environment in this book.

      Environments Reflect Values and Shape Identity

      People in the United States spend most of their time in human-made environments of one kind or another. Some of these are carefully designed, while others appear to have been haphazardly put together. Spaces are typically created with some kind of purpose or intention, whether or not this is evident. Every environment implies a set of values or beliefs about the people who use a space and the activities that take place there. For example, having individual desks rather than grouping children at tables suggests that the teacher believes children learn best in isolation from one another and values individual work over group activities.

      Thoughtfully planned or not, each environment also influences the people who use it in subtle or dramatic ways. People also have different preferences for the environment they feel most comfortable in at any given time. Depending on individual dispositions, experiences, cultural lenses, or needs of the moment, people may prefer to be alone or in the company of others, quiet or actively engaged, in bright or filtered light, or in an urban or wilderness setting. An environment may temporarily overstimulate or bore, calm or agitate those in it. Spending an extended period of one’s life in an environment deemed unpleasant will eventually exact a toll. Because of this, a number of professional fields focus on designing spaces, from architecture to landscaping to lighting and interior design, marketing, and human psychology.

      Children in the United States spend thousands of hours in early childhood programs. The early childhood profession now has assessment tools to define quality program environments. But most US programs have not drawn wisdom from those outside our profession who specialize in designing spaces. Our early childhood program spaces aren’t typically put together with conscious, sustained attention to the values they communicate or the effect they have on the children and adults who spend their days in them. Perhaps this omission accounts for the awe that engulfs most visitors to the Italian schools of Reggio Emilia where the programs are housed in aesthetically gorgeous spaces that most early childhood teachers and administrators from anywhere in the world would love to live or work in. At the same time, Reggio Emilia environments deliberately reflect the community’s values and beliefs about children, families, teachers, and the social construction of knowledge. Here’s how Lella Gandini (2002), author and Reggio Children liaison, summarizes their intentions in designing

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