Best environment for child learning

The environment we are in affects our moods, ability to form relationships, effectiveness in work or play—even our health. In addition, the early childhood group environment has a very crucial role in children’s learning and development for two important reasons.

Children need to explore, experiment, and learn basic knowledge through direct experience. Indeed, childhood is a time when we learn firsthand about the physical world the feel of water, the constant pull of gravity, the stink of rotten fruit, and the abrasive feel of concrete on a bare knee. Play provides a way for children to integrate all their new experiences into their rapidly developing minds, bodies, emotions, and social skills. Brain research supports this idea, stressing that children learn best through an integrated approach combining physical, emotional, cognitive, and social growth. The role of the teacher is critical in a child’s life. Children depend on teachers to be their confidant, colleague, model, instructor, and nurturer of educational experiences. Clearly children need lots of exposure to other people in their early childhood years. One of the greater weaknesses of Western society is that our children have less exposure to the diverse group of people living in the local village—baker, farmer, gardener, carpenter, piano tuner, bricklayer, painter, etc.  Young children need to feel important. In past eras children were responsible to water the garden, do farm chores, and care for younger children. Children need to feel that what they do is meaningful to someone besides themselves. A basic human need is the need to belong. Children need to feel they belong, too. They need to be close to people they know, have familiar and comfortable objects, and be in a setting that has a personal history for them.

Childhood Environments:

Unlike traditional classrooms, early childhood environments need to support both basic functions and learning activities. Look around your classroom from a child's perspective. Are toilets, sinks, windows, faucets, drinking fountains, mirrors, towel racks, chairs and tables, tooth brush containers, and bulletin boards at the child's level and child-sized? Are classrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and eating areas close together so that children can develop self-help skills and important autonomous behaviors? Like children, teachers also need to have spaces that are functional. Teachers need to be able to arrange and rearrange their classrooms for various class activities and supervision purposes. Classrooms that include permanent, built-in features such as lofts, playhouses, tables, benches, alcoves, and cabbies can be problematic. These types of fixed features make it difficult for teachers to create areas for gross motor activities, can cause injury in active children, or prevent inclusion of physical activities altogether. Classrooms built as a basic shell work best.

Special Needs for children:

Even environments carefully designed and equipped for young children do not meet the needs of children with disabilities. Adaptations must be made carefully for any child with special needs, be they physical challenges, learning disabilities, or emotional issues.

Diversity:

The environment should reflect the importance of children by including examples of their work in progress, finished products, and by displaying images of children. Every child in the program must see examples of themselves and their family throughout the center, not just in the classroom. Visual images are an important part of developing a feeling of belonging in all children, so it is important to display pictures of single parent families, grandparent families, and homes of every race and ethnicity, including interracial, multicultural, and adoptive families. The entire center should also reflect diversity throughout the world  race, ethnicity, languages (not just English and Spanish), art, gender roles, religious ceremonies, shelter, work, traditions, and customs. The goal is for children to be exposed to the rich diversity of the entire world (Wardle, 1992). This is done through artwork, photos, posters, and signs on the wall; books; dolls; parent boards, newsletters, announcements, and magazines; and curricula materials such as puzzles, people sets, activity books, music, art materials, artifacts in the dramatic play area, and fabrics.

Planning for Learning Environment:

When setting up an effective preschool classroom, a variety of factors must be carefully considered and balanced (Olds, 1982). Below are some of the critical environmental issues that must be carefully addressed as you plan the environment.

Storage areas are a little like entrance and exits—they receive lots of traffic and are noisy and congested. For these reasons, storage areas can sometimes foster disruptive behavior and noise. Provide easy access to materials, allowing children to get what they need quietly and easily. The closer materials are to where they will be used, the better. Storage must also be designed so that materials for independent child use are separate from those teachers control.

Activity areas need to be located next to supplies and be easy to clean up. The classic example is the art area. While providing easy access to paint, easels, paper, and brushes, the art area needs to be close to a water source and on a surface that can withstand a mess. Similarly, the reading area must be close to book shelves, magazine racks, and comfortable places to sit.

Managing noise is important in a classroom. Placing carpet on the floor absorbs noise as doe’s absorbent tile on the ceiling. The reading center should be next to a quiet area like the art area. Blocks are loud, and should be located next to other loud areas such as the woodworking bench. Noisy activities can also be placed in transition areas or moved outside in good weather.

Dividers are any physical object that serves to delineate areas within a classroom, create interest areas, control traffic, and distribute children throughout the classroom. Almost anything can be used as a divider, so long as it is safe  shelves, couches, fabric hung from a line, streamers attached to the ceiling, folding screens, puppet stages, etc. Safety is obviously a critical issue. Some dividers are easy to push over. The larger and heavier they are at the bottom, the safer. A divider can also be secured by fastening it to the floor or a wall. Several equipment companies have introduced dividers that attach directly to storage units and furniture. Ideally, dividers should be malty-functional for use as storage units, play furniture, and display boards. Keep in mind that solid dividers or walls of more than 30-40 inches high disrupt the circulation of air in the classroom and limit supervision of children. Less solid dividers, like fabric, avoid this problem. One teacher creatively used colorful fabric streamers attached to the ceiling as effective dividers.

Evaluation for best Environment:

Carefully select the person who will conduct the evaluation. The person should be objective and familiar with the program and children. Evaluate the entire center, including the playground, hallways, and bathrooms. It makes little sense for a program to have a nice, cozy, intimate classroom, with learning centers and children's work displayed everywhere, and long, cold institutional corridors and large bathrooms with adult-size urinals. Make sure all the important objectives of the program are addressed. Most instruments list each objective and items that support those objectives. Be particularly attentive to ways the environment supports new program objectives. If the program just added a technology objective, are there enough computers and a well-equipped computer learning center? Ensure consistency. If the program stresses developmentally appropriate practice and play, then the computer component cannot be designed to support teacher directed instruction and drill/skill activities. Balance what we know to be good for children with the new fixation on academics. Many public schools and Head Start programs are emphasizing teacher directed instruction in academics at the expense of meeting all the children's needs. Make sure environments designed to support diversity address all forms of diversity. It is as important for an all minority program to show racial, ethnic, and national diversity as a white program; gender, language, religion, ability, and occupational diversity should all be evident. Once the evaluation is completed; the results should be tabulated, analyzed, and communicated to the program's decision-makers. The information gained from an evaluation is extremely valuable and can be used to design new programs and offerings as well as construct the budget for the coming school year.

First, young children are in the process of rapid brain development. In the early years, the brain develops more synapses or connections than it can possibly use. Those that are used by the child form strong connections, while the synapses that are not used are pruned away. Children’s experiences help to make this determination. The National Scientific Council of the Developing Child compares the development of the brain to constructing a house stating, “Just as a lack of the right materials can result in blueprints that change, the lack of appropriate experiences can lead to alterations in genetic plans.” They further state, “Building more advanced cognitive, social, and emotional skills on a weak initial foundation of brain architecture is far more difficult and less effective than getting things right from the beginning”. Because children’s experiences are limited by their surroundings, the environment we provide for them has a crucial impact on the way the child’s brain develops.

The second reason that the early childhood group environment has such a strong role in children’s development is because of the amount of time children spend in these environments. Many children spend a large portion of their wakeful hours in early childhood group settings. For example, a baby beginning child care will spend up to 12,000 hours in the program. This is more time than he will spend in both elementary and secondary school. Children will typically spend another 4,000 hours in kindergarten through third grade classrooms.

The early childhood environment that this baby enters will reflect the teacher’s philosophy, values, and beliefs about children and learning through either deliberate design or lackadaisical overlook. It provides messages to all those who enter—children, parents, and staff. Is this a place where I am welcomed and where my physical, social, and intellectual needs will be met? Is this an environment where I am seen as worthwhile and competent? Do I passively receive information in this environment, or am I actively engaging in the construction of knowledge? Does someone think I am special enough to provide a beautiful environment for my benefit? Anita Rue Olds, a well-known environmental designer, believes that we should design our early childhood environments for miracles, not minimums. She states:

Children are miracles. Believing that every child is a miracle can transform the way we design for children’s care. When we invite a miracle into our lives, we prepare ourselves and the environment around us. We may set out flowers or special offerings. We may cleanse ourselves, the space, or our thoughts of everything but the love inside us. We make it our job to create, with reverence and gratitude, a space that is worthy of a miracle! Action follows through. We can choose to change. We can choose to design spaces for miracles, not minimums.

A good early childhood environment meets the child's basic needs and supports and encourages children to engage in activities that implement the program's curriculum. Further, the environment is designed to enable staff to facilitate the optimum learning for their children. Finally, the environment makes parents and guardians feel welcome, involved, and empowered.

Building a language rich environment is, on the face of it, an easy thing to do. Unfortunately, in today's busy households and with the busy lifestyles of parents who have to work full-time, it is harder to find the time to spend with your children than many of us realize. However, there are many opportunities to use and teach language in everyday situations and create a good environment for learning.