Know

As discussed in the previous lesson (Learning Environments: An Introduction), environments send us powerful messages. A carefully planned environment can help school-age children feel calm and secure, while at the same time, engaged and inquisitive. Within the first lesson we introduced general ideas to consider when designing environments for school-agers and key activity areas that foster child and youth learning. However, when designing or redesigning your indoor space, it is also important to consider logistics, aesthetics, organization, and the needs of all children in the space.

计划的室内空间应满足儿童和青年的需求，并让他们探索他们的兴趣并采取主动性。室内环境应（理事会认证，放学后和青年发展）：

• 安排各种活动
• Have adequate storage for personal items of children, youth, and staff
• Have developmentally appropriate materials in well-organized places that allow children and youth to take materials out and return them by themselves
• 拥有适当大小的家具，儿童和青年可以舒适地使用
• Display children’s artwork, family photos, or other décor that makes the space feel personalized and home-like
• 有一个带有软座位的区域，儿童和青少年休息或独处

In addition, these environments should be safe and healthy. Maintaining a safe and healthy indoor learning environment should be done on a daily basis by completing your program’s safety checklists, ensuring all materials and equipment are in working order, and maintaining expectations that keep children and youth free from harm. When designing your space, make sure that you can supervise all areas, including private spaces. Refer to the Safety and Healthy courses for more information.

Designing for Logistics

In your school-age environment, you will need spaces for group activities, privacy, storage, and display.

Places for Group Activities

Children and youth likely spend much of their formal school day with little choice in how they spend their time, so they often look to their “after-school” or “summer camp” environments to provide more autonomy. Indeed, free play is important for children’s development and should be a significant part of school-age programs (Frost, Wortham, & Reifel, 2012). However, this does not mean your program should lack structure or that providing some more structured activities is inappropriate, especially if children have a choice in the structured experiences they select. Participating in engaging, yet structured, school-age programs has been linked to children’s positive academic outcomes and greater motivation for learning (Mahoney, Lord & Carryl, 2005).

支持结构化活动,你应该计划areas that support large group meetings. Depending on the size of your school-age program, whole-group meetings may be relatively rare or even impossible, however, you will want some spaces that support smaller group meetings where you can bring a number of children together to help build relationships and teach skills or concepts particular to interests they are exploring. Children can even be presenters during this time, sharing a new technique, relevant research, or book they found. Having designated spaces for these activities and designing them to minimize distractions can help you make the most of these times. This doesn’t mean you have to have a spot that is used just for group activities. In some smaller environments, this simply is not possible. Staff members in such classrooms can get creative! The toy and games area could become a perfect space for group meetings. Simply covering the shelves with sheets, flipping around shelves on wheels, or adding a stop sign can help minimize distractions and support children’s successful engagement with the group. In other programs, the music and movement or gymnasium space may make a natural home for large group activities. Just make sure there is enough space for everybody involved to sit comfortably.

隐私的地方

School-age programs are high-energy places. Similar to adults, children sometimes need time and space to relax on their own; especially after being in formal school, school-age children may crave some down time. You can help children and youth meet this need by offering spaces that are limited to one or two children. The library, a cozy corner, quiet games, or other spaces in your room can help children calm themselves.

Places for Storage and Display

学龄龄节目需要大量的材料！玩具，书籍，游戏和其他资源经常旋转进出主动使用。重要的是计划在学龄计划中至少有三种存储：开放存储，儿童和青少年可以轻松访问，为教师材料封闭存储，以及个人物品的存储（Dodge等，2010）。计划储存和展示儿童评估材料和艺术作品也很重要。

• 打开存储: Store materials that are in active use on open, labeled shelves. As discussed below, open storage promotes accessibility.
• Closed storage: When not in use, securely store tools such as office supplies, cooking utensils, or cleaning fluids. It is important to designate and carefully label secure locations for these items. This will help you maintain inventory and ensure children’s safety.
• 个人存储: Children and adults need spaces to store their personal belongings. Label children and youth’s personal storage with pictures or words. This helps send the message that these children belong here and can help decrease clutter by letting children know where to store their items when not in use. Personal storage spaces for children also allows them to easily access their personal items (e.g., backpacks with homework, or gloves and boots for inclement weather) when needed, supporting their autonomy.
• Display：存储和显示艺术品和投资组合向儿童发出强大的消息，了解他们的工作价值，并帮助您更有效地完成工作。它与儿童沟通，这是一个测试他们的想法的地方，并帮助您更轻松地跟踪儿童的发展进展。

Aesthetics

In the introductory lesson we discovered that high-quality, school-age programs send numerous positive messages to children and youth. One of the best ways you can communicate to school-age children that your program is “a good place to be” is through the small touches you place throughout the environment that express the personality of your program.

Home-like

Children and youth are more likely to feel that they can be themselves and have a sense of belonging when their classroom environment is more like their homes. We will address this more in the Materials lesson, but there are many ways you can add personal touches to your school-age program that create a home-like feel. For example, you can include:

• Soft furniture, such as a couch or large armchair
• 无毒植物
• Natural or soft lighting, through the use of window or lamps
• 扔枕头，靠垫，豆袋椅
• Decorative touches, such as area rugs or repurposed furniture
• Family photos from the children and staff
• Inexpensive frames to hang children’s artwork on the walls
• More neutral paint colors

Remember that children may spend several hours a day in your classroom or in their formal school. Your effort to create a relaxing, home-like environment is critical. It can be overwhelming to spend eight or twelve hours in spaces that are visually overwhelming, with bright lights or bright colors. A home-like environment, in addition to places for privacy and quiet areas, offers children and youth the opportunity to seek calm when they need it.

Including pictures of the children and their families, in conjunction with personal storage and display of children and youth’s artwork, is another great way to communicate that this spaces belongs to them. When displaying pictures or adding decorative touches, remember to hang or offer some items at children’s eye level to reinforce that they are valued members of the classroom space.

Inviting Engagement: Provocations

You can also offer items of beauty or wonder in your program that invite children and youth’s exploration and engagement. One way of doing this in your program is to think about the use of provocations. A provocation is a picture, experience, or item that provokes thought, interest, questions, or creativity (Edwards, 2002). In the Materials lesson, we will address different things to consider when selecting materials for your classroom. Provocations can help provoke children and youth to use or think about materials in new ways. When designing your classroom, it can be useful to think about how you will incorporate provocations. Your inspiration for what provocations to offer will often come from children’s current interests and their learning goals. Provocations could be:

• 图片。包括儿童和青少年的兴趣的图片不仅可以帮助扩大他们对某些概念的探索，但它有助于发送儿童思想在教室里有价值的信息。尽可能地使用真实物品的图片。
• An event or experience.For example, go on a field trip, do an outdoor nature walk, or have a special visitor in your program. You can also take pictures during the event or experience to display later. Pictures like these, in conjunction with personal storage and children and youth’s artwork, also communicate that this space belongs to the children.
• Books.与儿童目前的兴趣相关的战略性地放置书籍可以改变他们的戏剧和参与。例如，在回收材料旁边的机器人上提供一本书可以邀请建设创意机器人结构。
• 来自自然的物品。These could include leaves or nuts you collected outside or a vase of fresh flowers.
• Simple changes in display.例如，在艺术区域添加一个斑点光线，闪耀在一碗新鲜水果上，可以帮助孩子更多关于光，阴影，阴影和静物艺术作品，特别是如果您还提供书籍和艺术工具着色和绘图。

安置是挑衅的重要关键。您希望孩子们将在您的计划中的每个活动区域内做些什么？您目前正在探索哪些概念以及某些领域的挑衅如何帮助延长或关注儿童和青少年的戏剧？请记住，挑衅旨在成为一个指导，或者儿童如何与某些材料或空间互动的灵感，但它们并不意味着为孩子和青年应该在每个区域或与之做出的内容材料。例如，也许您在艺术区域中设置了现货灯和水果碗显示器，具有适当的书籍和工具，以支持使用着色和阴影创建“静物”绘图，但儿童更有兴趣创建他们名称的阴影图画。那没关系;不是每一个挑衅都会在您打算的方式中利息每个孩子。如果孩子始终如一地忽略某些挑衅，他们可能不再对那种特定的概念或想法感兴趣。

Designing for All

When you look to design or redesign your program, you need to consider the needs and learning goals for all children. Each time a new school-age child enters your room, you should consider what changes need to be made to best support his or her engagement in the program. For a child with special needs, it is important to speak with the child’s family and your trainer, coach, or supervisor so you know the child’s particular needs and the supports that will help. As we will discuss in the Materials lesson, assuring that your classroom is welcoming to children from diverse cultural backgrounds is also critical to supporting the success of all children in your room.

In terms of environmental design, you may need to consider physical space within activity areas or pathways between activity areas, to assure that children with physical disabilities can easily move around and participate. You may need to alter the physical environment with ramps, chairs, tables, and so on that appropriately accommodate the needs and equipment for children with physical disabilities. In addition, all children, but particularly children and youth with social or behavioral needs, autism, or certain developmental disabilities, may benefit from a designated “cool down” area, where they can easily access materials that can help with self-soothing and where they can spend some minutes alone. To help children identify what they feel, the cool down space can also include pictures of children expressing different emotions, and pictures and words about different calming strategies (e.g., “Take deep breaths”). For children with autism or communication difficulties, it can also be helpful to provide multiple visual cues for how to use spaces and materials. This could mean that within the entrance to each activity area you provide a picture of children and youth safely playing in that space, or next to the clay in the art area, you offer a small series of pictures of how children could pinch or roll the clay with their hands or use special tools. See Kids Included Together (KIT) for more ideas on how to support children with special needs in your setting (https://www.kit.org/who-we-are/our-work/）。虽然您在学习环境与学龄儿童合作时，您应该遵守yabo电子游艺他们使用设备和材料的方式。如果有一些东西可以改变以更好地支持任何孩子的学习需求，应该引起计划人员的注意。yabo电子游艺另请参阅学习附件，提供一些适应性设备和材料以及对某些具有特殊需求的儿童可能有用的环境支持。

Organization

Imagine walking into your familiar neighborhood grocery store to quickly grab an ingredient for dinner only to discover that the aisles and items have been rearranged or are no longer available. What should have been a quick trip now has turned into a 30-minute scavenger hunt. You would probably feel frustrated and discouraged. Children and youth also feel frustrated when they cannot find what they need and when materials for play are unavailable. As staff members, it is your responsibility to make sure materials are easily accessible and well organized. When organizing your materials, you should think about three goals: independence, easy use, and learning.

组织独立性

首先，我们希望儿童和青年知道他们可以自己找到和使用材料。实现这一目标的最佳方式是将物资存放在开放的架子上，以便在该计划中的所有学龄儿童进入的高度。这允许儿童看到可用的材料，做出选择，并在没有成人支持的情况下退回物品。使用开放式架子以简单而有吸引力的方式显示玩具和材料。但请记住，太多的选择可能会压倒。

Second, we want children to learn to use signs and symbols in the environment to support their independence. The major way we help them do this is by carefully labeling objects or the places the objects belong. The best labels use written words plus pictures or parts of the object (like a puzzle piece on a puzzle box). Labeling not only helps children learn to clean up independently, it also creates a print-rich environment, which can be especially helpful for younger school-age children who are still developing their word-recognition skills. As an added benefit, you may find yourself giving fewer directions and reminders. When children and youth can engage independently with materials, you have more time for interacting and expanding learning opportunities.

Organize for Easy Use

应组织材料所以孩子们想要与他们互动。组织您的材料非常重要，所以孩子们可以在需要时找到他们所需要的东西。这也有助于孩子们知道“我可以自己做事”。有组织的材料使儿童能够尝试想法并使用新材料。组织方便使用时，请考虑将像材料一起存储在一起。像材料一样，是某些活动所必需的东西的东西。像孩子一样思考：如果我想在写作中心工作，我将需要什么或想要什么？放在铅笔，蜡笔，标记，纸质，剪刀，贴纸，模板，邮票，信件卡，单词卡，名片和写作区域中的图片词典都可以让孩子们立即涉及他们的想法。这意味着您可以在房间的许多地区有重复的材料。铅笔，纸张和剪贴板在玩具和游戏中也是有用的，以保持分数或开发新规则，因此应将一组存储在那里，以便于使用。

The types of storage you choose, including bins, baskets, and containers, can affect how easily children access and put away materials. For example, storing books on a shelving unit that allows children to see the full front covers may spark greater interest in reading and make it easier for children to choose a book they are interested in. Storage bins should be open or have easy open-and-close lids for materials that you want children to access themselves. Bins should also be made of lightweight material (e.g., plastic instead of metal) and not too large or too heavy that children cannot handle them on their own. Clear plastic bins will allow children to easily see the materials that are inside. Bins should also be large enough to accommodate materials without tipping over. Baskets should not be made of materials that could poke or scratch children and should not be used to store materials that can fall out through the holes (e.g., crayons). Wheeled carts that can transport books or bins of materials may make it easier to rotate materials.

Organize for Learning

The steps you take to organize for independence and easy use will also help you keep the space tidy, which can prevent safety hazards (e.g., tripping over materials). Children will know where materials belong, and they won’t have to carry materials far from their storage spaces. Furthermore, these strategies help children and youth respect the materials and the classroom environment.

As discussed previously when considering provocations, you can organize your space to spark or build upon children and youth’s interests. Displays (e.g., pictures, posters, or wall-hangings) or books can be arranged to help children and youth explore ideas or try new things with the appropriate materials nearby. Displays should be at children’s eye level and should contain their own work, pictures relevant to their interests, or pictures meant to help spark further exploration. They should reflect the backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences of the diverse children in your program. To maintain children and youth’s engagement in play and learning, you will want to rotate materials regularly so children have the chance to use different kinds of materials.

You can organize your space so children encounter meaningful learning opportunities throughout. This means providing well-organized and well-planned literacy, math, science, and social studies materials in various activity areas. For example, offer a book about plant structure with a microscope and various natural items in the discovery and science area, or keep tape measures, clipboards, blueprints, and books about famous structures in the construction or toys and games area. The art area can include books, paintings, or other materials from a wide array of cultures.

See

Think about the principles discussed in this lesson—logistics, aesthetics, organization and attention to the needs of all children. Watch the following video and take a look at a few ways school-age staff members have considered these elements in their own programs.

Indoor Environments

Do

• Make the indoor environment feel like home.Use some of the suggestions within this lesson to make your classroom feel comfortable yet engaging.
• Give children what they need.Recognize that children and youth spend a lot of time in your program, and everybody needs a break sometimes. Provide a variety of ways that children can take a little time for themselves; a quiet book area, a computer center, or the art area can all provide a brief break from the busy, social day. This can be especially important to some children with special needs.
• Plan ahead.思考如何用空间来组织活动vities, storage, and display. Then identify the resources you need to make those spaces work for you. Think about how you collect and use child assessment information. You might be more likely to keep your records up-to-date if they are stored in a visible location. Make a list of all the materials you will need in each space based on the activities, storage, and displays that you are planning.
• Keep safety a priority.When designing your space, make sure that you can supervise all areas, including private spaces. Make sure that you have secure storage for all items that are unsafe for children (e.g., cleaning materials). A well-designed indoor environment will also keep children and youth engaged in appropriate play and help prevent undesirable, unsafe behaviors (e.g., jumping, running in inappropriate spaces). See the Safety course for more information.

Remember that your classroom can send messages to children. We want the classroom to help children and youth say, “I can do things on my own here” and “this is a place I can trust.” There are simple ways your classroom sends these messages. By organizing for independence, easy use, and learning, you can make your classroom a more effective space and prepare children for important learning.

• Make sure shelves and classroom materials are clearly labeled and that materials are stored where they are easy to use. You can use computer clipart, drawings, or photographs to make labels. This is a great way to involve children in your environment as many of your school-age children can write the words for your labels.
• 将棋盘游戏或凹陷靠近应使用它们的桌子或地毯。
• Store art materials (beads, cotton balls, feathers, ribbon) in clear containers on a shelf near the art table. Keep glue, scissors, and paper handy, as well.
• 将您的所有户外玩具储存在门附近的大包或篮子里（如果您没有这些物品的外部存储）。
• Think about how children will access smocks for art, water, and other messy play. Store the smocks strategically, so children can get them when necessary.
• Think about the materials you currently need to support the children’s interest, current skill level, and learning goals. Remove or rotate materials to avoid clutter and support focused engagement.