Essentials Magazine Essentials Fall 2016 | Page 33

Early Childhood Learning

Early Childhood
Classroom Landscape:

Experts are beginning to break
the traditional aesthetic codes of early
childhood classrooms and examining
classroom design with a new perspective.
They are, for example, listening to the
research of environmental scientists that
clearly demonstrates a positive correlation
between human productivity and space
design. Armed with the contemporary
thinking about pedagogy and space and
the recent educational and environmental
research on potential of positive places,
educators are beginning to recognize the
classroom environment as the third teacher. As a result, certain trends are starting
to emerge: (1) linking the classroom to the
local community; (2) providing authentic
play spaces; and (3) naturalizing children’s
spaces.

1

Trends
BY SANDRA DUNCAN,
JODY MARTIN, & REBECCA KRETH

Photographs by Sandra Duncan

T

here are over 11 million children under the age of five spending the majority of their preschool lifetime in some type of early
childhood classroom. Most of these environments for young
children look pretty much the same resembling each other with their
traditional primary-colored equipment, area rugs bordered with cartoon
figures, shapes and letters, brightly colored plastic toys, laminated posters of all sizes and shapes, and shelves stuffed and stacked high with
learning materials. Even the room’s arrangement of the learning centers
and furniture is similar. There is, indeed, a certain aesthetic code or a
traditionally accepted notion of what an early childhood environment
should be amongst teachers, college professors, parents, and producers
of early childhood products. The result? Cookie cutter classrooms.
33 essentials | fall 2014

Linking Classroom to
Community

Connecting the child’s outside world to the classroom
is essential for them to feel
connected, included, respected, accepted,
and secure — all critical emotional needs.
Often, however, our definition of the
outside world is much too broad when we
include experiences such as flying to Japan
in an airplane made of cardboard with
children’s chairs for the jet’s seats or turn
the classroom into an Amazon rainforest. It is far more meaningful to connect
children to the amazing world immediately outside their classrooms’ windows
or doors. It doesn’t matter if your classroom is located in a suburban, urban, or
rural landscape, place-based adventures
abound anywhere you reside.
Placed-based education is the process
of using the local community and environment as a starting point for teaching
academic and social-emotional concepts
to young children. Because place-based
education emphasizes hands-on, real-world learning experiences in the immediate area, this educational approach:
(1) helps students develop stronger ties to
their c