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How Do Environments Affect You?

You probably have places where you like to go: a favorite restaurant, a local park, a sporting event, or a good friend’s home. What about those places makes you feel welcome or secure? What makes you want to go back? You may be thinking about the people with and around you, the color of a room, whether or not there is sunlight, what you smell or hear, the furniture and accessories, or the temperature.

Now think about places you don’t like to go. Maybe it’s the dentist’s office, a crowded airport, or a noisy restaurant. What about these environments makes them less pleasant for you?

In some settings, we feel relaxed and comfortable. In others, we feel tense, overwhelmed, and confused. The environment has a powerful effect on us. It influences how we feel, what we do, and how we respond. Some of us dislike places where we feel that we can’t control or predict our experiences. In some spaces, we may feel like we don’t belong or are not appreciated.

就像成年人一样，学龄儿童和青年受其环境的影响。这是我们的工作，为学龄儿童提供教室和其他学习空间让他们感到欢迎，安全，准备学习。yabo电子游艺

设计您的空间，以满足学龄儿童的需求

创建支持性学习环境涉及时间，反射（思考）和规yabo电子游艺划。学龄儿童每天在学校或夏季每天12小时内每天都在您的计划中进行三小时，环境在帮助他们发展和学习方面发挥着重要作用。研究表明，高质量，课后的环境可以帮助学龄儿童的社交技能，学习动机，学术成就，并可以帮助较低的肥胖水平（Durlak，Mahoney，Bohnert＆Parente，2010）。yabo电子游艺军事儿童是一个可能在日常生活中经历大量变化的特殊群体，您的支持性教室可以成为它们的重要始终。支持性环境是：

• Well organized: orderly, planned, and safe
• Dependable: a stable “home base” for children who need it
• Flexible: able to adjust to meet the needs of different children
• 丰富：充满了吸引经验

这种支持性环境可以将儿童和青年发送各种关于他们的学习的积极信息（Dodge等，2010）：yabo电子游艺

• This is a good place to be.
• You belong here.
• This is a place you can trust.
• There are places where you can be by yourself when you want to.
• You can do many things on your own here.
• This is a safe place to explore and try out your ideas.

Environments not only impact how we feel and give us messages about how to act, they can also impact what we learn. The Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education recognizes the tremendous impact of the environment by referring to it as the “third teacher” (with parents and teachers as children’s first and second teachers). The Reggio Emilia approach was developed by Loris Malaguzzi and named after an area in Italy. This approach believes that children are powerful learners and that children’s interests should guide adults’ decisions surrounding learning, including how the environment is arranged and the materials provided. The Reggio Emilia approach believes that the learning environment plays a critical role and that the intentionality, or thoughtful planning and action, of teachers in the design of spaces and their selection and arrangement of materials significantly influences children’s level of engagement and learning (Edwards, 2002). We will return to these ideas in future lessons in this course.

Places for Play and Learning: Activity Areas

When you walk into a retail or grocery store, how do you find what you need? If you are looking for grapes, you probably feel confident that you can find them with other fresh fruits and vegetables. If you want to find a new pair of socks, you probably have a good idea about where to look. Obviously some stores have better designs than others, but many retail establishments make the most out of simple design principles: objects with similar uses are stored near each other, and signs help you find what you need.

Now think about a child or youth in your school-age program. How does he or she know where to find toys and materials? How does he or she use the environment to make decisions?

零售店和儿童和青年节目之间存在许多差异，但通过他们的目的组织材料在这两种环境中都有很大的意义。在商店中，我们可能会致电这些类似物品的“部门”。在学龄儿童或青少年的环境中，我们使用术语“活动区域”或“学习中心”来描述为某些目的而设计的空间，或者将具有相似用途的材料的空间。yabo电子游艺

When a school-age child enters a well-designed activity area, he or she knows the:

• Materials that can be found there
• Type of play (loud, quiet, social, solitary) that may happen there
• Expectations for how to behave there
• Ways to explore, learn, and have fun there

作为一名学龄工作人员，您每天为儿童设计学习机会，您的室内或室外环境为大多数这些机会yabo电子游艺设定了舞台。活动区域是学龄学习环境中学习的关键工具。yabo电子游艺您可以使用儿童和青少年的利益，目标和能力来设计您的活动区域。

School-age learning environments should contain a variety of developmentally appropriate materials and activity areas. Some important activity areas include:

• 图书馆:包括childr感兴趣的书en and youth in your program. Create a space with a variety of sofas, chairs, and cushions on which children can read comfortably. Ensure that books are available for a wide range of reading levels. Sometimes the library also doubles as a calming, private space. If the library is not available, make sure there is some space for children and youth to play or relax independently when they become overwhelmed with others.
• Writing: Provide paper, markers, crayons, pencils, and other writing materials. It can be helpful to provide different kinds of paper (e.g., some with wide lines, some thin lined, colored construction paper, and even sticky notes) to help support a wide variety of skill levels and writing ideas. Set up a writing area in a space with a table and chairs. This space can also be used for children and youth to complete their homework.

  

• 科学与探索: Children and youth can use this space for experiments and scientific exploration. Fill this area with a variety of materials that allow for open-ended exploration. Appropriate materials for the discovery area include natural materials, such as rocks and pinecones, and tools, such as magnets, weights, microscopes, rulers, and measuring tapes. This could also be a space to experiment with simple machines like ramps or pulleys (see this resource for more information:https://www.pbs.org/video/science-trek-simple-machines/）。
• 技术: The use of technology, such as computers, can provide children and youth of all ages developmentally appropriate learning opportunities. Computers and the internet allow children to explore people, places, and animals that they cannot experience in person. Use of interactive e-books and games that facilitate learning of letters, letter sounds, and numbers are additional ways children can use computers to meet learning goals. Refer to the Safety lesson for information on internet safety.
• 玩具和游戏: Games allow children and youth to develop important thinking, social, and fine-motor skills. This area may include puzzles, board games, and small objects. Many school-age children also enjoy construction with small interconnecting blocks (e.g., Lego bricks) or other more sophisticated building materials (e.g., marble mazes). These could be part of the games area or be an activity area of their own.
• Arts: Allow children and youth to express themselves creatively and further develop fine-motor skills in this space. Painting, drawing, and collage opportunities are a few of many activities that can be done in the arts area. Provide a variety of materials, such as sponges, rollers, glitter, tape, paint, stamps, and all types of recycled materials. The art area could also include a space for wood-working, sewing, pottery, or other more involved art and construction ideas.
• Movement and music: Children and youth can engage in large movements, make their own music, and respond to the music of others in this space. You can provide a variety of materials here, such as streamers, ribbons, shakers, musical instruments, and recorded music. The music and movement area can provide an opportunity for dance and rhythm exploration.

此外,根据不同的年龄段school-age program, especially if you have kindergarten or early elementary school children, children may enjoy dressing up and engaging in pretend play. It may be useful to have a dramatic play activity area that includes various props to take on different characters or materials that support pretend play in a flexible way (e.g., the space can be a family home, a restaurant, or a dentist’s office). Depending on how you design this space, this activity area could also be a space for exploring theater, where older children could experiment with enacting real plays.

记住,这取决于你的身体space, these activity areas could all be within one large classroom or spread out over different physical spaces in your program. The key is making sure there is logic behind the placement of different activity areas and that children and youth know where the various activities are and what the rules are for accessing them (e.g., the “music and movement” area in the gymnasium will open at 3:30, once a staff member is there). In many school-age programs, children and youth use an activity management system—tags, pictures, or symbols used to limit the number of children who play in an activity area and help staff keep track of where children are. We will address this more in Lesson 5.

Promote a Feeling of Ownership

School-age children and youth should be given the opportunity to help design and organize their environment. Allowing children and youth to choose materials, create a hangout space, or pick out books for the library will give them a sense of pride and ownership. When children and youth feel a sense of ownership of their learning space, they are more likely to respect the space and feel a greater responsibility to take care of it. In addition, giving the children some freedom to adjust the space depending on their interests can create amazing learning opportunities. For example, if a group of children is interested in a particular sport or book, providing opportunities and spaces for them to create items and carry out these interests (e.g., creating an indoor hockey arena or constructing a wizarding school from a book series) can provide opportunities for researching ideas, applying “real world” math by measuring and planning, and working together as a team.

Children and youth feel that they are an important part of your program when they see elements from their lives throughout the learning space. Hang children’s artwork in inexpensive frames and display photos of children and youth with their peers or families. You can further promote ownership by including elements in the classroom from children’s homes (e.g., asking families to donate décor items or pictures that reflect their cultures). Doing so allows teachers and children to celebrate their diversity and the various cultures that are represented in your program.

拥抱多样性并鼓励家庭分享有关其文化和背景的信息非常重要。邀请父母带来独特的材料或文化特定的食物，与您的计划的儿童和青少年分享。鼓励孩子以尊重的方式探索他人的背景。从世界各地的世界或青少年可能有学龄儿童和青少年，他们和他们的军事家庭一起出国。通过在您的学习环境中反映来重视他们的经历和知识。yabo电子游艺

See

School-age learning environments look different depending on the program. The following video provides examples of safe and organized learning environments that meet the interests and needs of school-age children and youth. It highlights activity areas to consider in the development of your school-age program.

Learning Environments: An Introduction

Do

There are many schools of thought on how to arrange school-age environments. Some important elements are found in every effective room design:

• Clear boundaries:Use shelves, furniture, or other barriers to help children and youth focus and avoid distractions. Large, open spaces encourage running and roughhousing. Arrange your furniture and activity areas to break up large, open spaces.
• Clear ways to enter and exit:Help children and youth know how and where to come into an activity area. If you use an activity management system, make sure children and youth know how to use it. For example, do they need to travel with a staff member to activity areas located in different parts of the building?
• Sufficient materials:As much as possible, have duplicates of favorite materials. Also make sure there are enough materials so several children can play in social areas, like the toy and games area. Children are more likely to have meaningful play together if there are enough materials to use together.
• Engaging materials that spark children’s interests:Think about what children and youth in your program like. Add materials or rotate materials regularly so children have new experiences. Think about the pictures, displays, print or writing materials that can support children’s learning and engagement in each area. We will discuss this more in the lessons in this section.
• Separate loud and quiet, active and calm spaces:安静活动区的例子是图书馆，艺术或写作中心。大声，活跃的地区可能包括玩具和游戏或戏剧性的游戏。
• Access to needed materials:Discovery and science and art spaces should have easy access to sinks. Technology would need access to electrical outlets. Soft carpeting in the library and toy and games area can make it easier for children to sit and interact with materials on the floor.
• Materials and activity areas aligned with learning objectives.
• Comfort and safety:观察儿童和青少年，确保所有设备和家具舒适地符合他们的需求。学龄儿童和青少年可以在年龄和大小方面大大，因此您可能需要各种各样的家具尺寸。实施您的计划的安全要求。始终模拟健康的行为和生活方式选择儿童和青年。

Completing this Course

For more information on what to expect in this course, the Learning EnvironmentsCompetency Reflection, and a list of the accompanying Learn, Explore and Apply resources and activities offered throughout the lessons, visit the School-Age Learning EnvironmentsCourse Guide.

Please note the References & Resources section at the end of each lesson outlines reference sources and resources to find additional information on the topics covered. As you complete lessons, you are not expected to review all the online references available. However, you are welcome to explore the resources further if you have interest, or at the request of your trainer, coach, or administrator.