Thank you to Bonnie's Global Café for having Lauren Karwoski Magee and me as guests of her café. We had a wonderful time discussing design ideas for COVID-19 environments and beyond.

 

Lauren Karwoski Magee is a licensed architect and is the Director of Architecture and Environmental Design for Guidecraft. She specializes in interdisciplinary design and leads an international team on the design of environments for young children, toddlers and infants. Lauren is a former educator and elected school board Vice-President with direct experience working with curriculum, facilities and operations in public schools. She has done extensive research into the psychology of places and spaces, specifically in the ways people of all ages engage with the built environment and natural surroundings. With Guidecraft, Lauren applies that experience, along with her expertise in the philosophies of Reggio Emilia, Montessori, Nature-Based education, and other teaching methods, to the holistic design of places for young children.

LKMagee@guidecraft.com | Skype: Ldkmagee@gmail.com | Instagram: @LaurensLearningLab | WeChat: LKMagee | 845.772.3048

 

Full Article Link:

Engaging Children in Creating a Safe (Covid-Mindful) EnvironmentA Conversation in Bonnie’s Global Café

The world’s axis is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun and hasn’t changed significantly in the last 40,000 years.  Although the world’s physical tilt is basically the same as it has always been, there’s no denying that our home-life rhythms are definitely tilting at new and different angles. With the onset of Coronavirus, we are living in completely different worlds where families are now working, learning, and keeping busy all together under one roof.  The familiar household rhythms and routines of going about our lives has been temporarily disrupted . . . making all of us, especially preschool children, feel a little shaky on our axis.

Their days are suddenly filled with large, inordinate, uninterrupted blocks of time at home. There’s hardly anywhere to go and few places where they can be just plain silly, jump up and down, or run about with the wild abandonment so famously akin to all young children. The shiny plastic toys have lost their luster and even pestering and teasing siblings is getting old.  If you are a preschooler, all of this is unsettling and maybe a bit boring. If you are a parent, all of this may be nerve wracking and perhaps a little overwhelming.

Enter Grandma’s Law: Busy Hands are Happy Hands.

My grandmother did a lot of handiwork and kept her hands busy with crocheting and knitting:  hats, scarves, mittens, slippers, doilies—you name it, she made it!  Her hands were always busy with the repetitive and rhythmic movement of knit . . .  purl . . .  knit . . .  purl.  As her hands moved with precise rhythm, she would often say: Busy hands are happy hands!

Grandma isn’t the only one who believes in the importance of busy hands. Occupational therapists, for example, use activities involving hands as a primary form of therapy for children’s issues such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Recently, neuroscientists have found that busy hands can positively alter the brain’s chemistry making us feel more productive and responsible, less anxious, and happier.

Although introducing knitting to preschoolers probably isn’t advisable, one simple way to encourage grandma’s mantra of busy hands is with family weaving projects.  

The most important element of family weaving projects is understanding the importance of wholeheartedly involving your child in the entire process of the projects—start to finish. Invite your child to join you in searching the kitchen, garage, or backyard for weaving bases and materials. The possibilities are truly endless.

Weaving Bases	Weaving Materials
·       Strawberry Baskets ·       Link Fences/Gates ·       Baby/Pet Gates ·       Baking Racks ·       Y-shaped Twigs ·       Colanders ·       Bicycle Wheel	·       Raffia ·       Vines ·       Yarn ·       Rope ·       Ribbons ·       Pipe Cleaners ·       Wire

Designate your child as the Master Weaver of the household, which means creating a workplace or artist studio in the home that belongs uniquely to creating weaving masterpieces. Include furniture that is just your child’s size, such as a small table and chairs. Add child-sized shelving for storing the potential weaving bases found around your home. Be sure there are plenty of storage baskets for all the collected weaving materials. Consider selecting a storage shelf that is big enough to handle large weaving bases such as bicycle wheels or hubcaps. Supplement the space with authentic materials gathered easily from nature including pinecones, river rocks, and driftwood or personal artifacts (i.e., photographs, beads, broken/unwanted costume jewelry, feathers, buttons, etc.) for children to add to and enhance their weavings.

Then invite the family’s Master Weaver to conduct weaving sessions for everyone to enjoy. This sends a message of your child’s importance as a valuable and competent member of the household as well as creates new home-life rhythms for the entire family.

Dr. Sandra Duncan joins architect, teacher and mom, Lauren Magee, in an episode of her new web series, Lauren's Learning Lab. In this installment, Dr. Duncan shares bite-sized ideas on how you can design small or large spaces into the right home learning environment for your children. These flexible spaces allow for children to have quiet, private time, or collaborative building time with siblings. Check out the video below:

There’s no denying it—we are living in a new normal with families now living, working, and learning all together under one roof.  The familiar household rhythms and routines of waking up, getting dressed, eating breakfast, and then leaving the house and going about our lives has been temporarily disrupted . . . making all of us, especially preschool children, feel a little unbalanced.  They feel off-kilter because their lives have been interrupted and routines broken.

Young children need routines to help them feel safe and secure in these times of uncertainty.

Because routines are predictable and repeated events, they help children know what to expect. Routines provide children a sense of security and a feeling of being safe so it is important for us to create home environments of consistency with familiar rhythms. One idea for bringing back home-life rhythms is holding morning family meetings.

In the workplace, morning meetings are commonplace. We gather around the meeting table with notepads, pens, phones and a cup of coffee to discuss company plans, ideas, challenges and work strategies for the day, week, or even month.  In a preschool classroom, early morning meetings are also part of an everyday routine. Designed for short periods of time, morning classroom meetings—typically held on a large gathering rug—effectively set the tone for a preschoolers’ day as well as establish a sense of community among the children.

For many of us, these normal routines are now gone as the family safely hibernates in the four walls of their home.

So, what can we do to bring back normalcy?

We can begin to create routines in our children’s lives that mimic the morning classroom meeting by beginning each day with a family meeting.  Gather together and share each other’s plans for the day. Calm children’s worries and celebrate in their accomplishments. Find something children can anticipate such as movie and pizza night.

The most important element of morning meetings is understanding the importance of being little and listening to your child’s viewpoint.

This means creating a place in the home that belongs uniquely to them. Create places in the home with furniture that is just their size. Design spaces that remind them of their learning center or preschool.  Include a rug, for example, that reminds them of their morning meeting at school. Get down to their level—both physically and emotionally—by adding a dramatic play center with a sink, stove, and refrigerator.  Include some blocks and shelf for storing.  Add authentic materials gathered easily from nature such as pinecones, river rocks, and driftwood.  And, then conduct the family morning meeting in your child’s unique and personal space, which sends a message to them of their importance and acceptance as well as creates new home-life rhythms for the entire family.

 

When most people talk about designing an early childhood education program, they mean the curriculum, the funding, or the program. Not Dr. Sandra Duncan. When the Design Consultant for Early Childhood Classrooms and Adjunct Professor at Nova Southeastern University talks about designing, she means it literally. Filmed for Early Learning Nation’s Mobile Studio at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)'s annual conference in Nashville, TN, on November 21, 2019

Author, designer and teacher, Sandra Duncan, EdD, and the president of Guidecraft, Gary Bilezikian, were honored to collaborate and contribute to the 250^th issue of Exchange Magazine, where they shared their views on the importance of empathetic and heart-centered design of early childhood environments.

Here is a glimpse of the article, recently published in the November/December 2019 issue of Exchange Magazine.

To read the entire article, and to learn more about heart-centered environmental design, click HERE

Heart-Centered Environmental Design
A Fresh Perspective

By: Sandra Duncan and Gary Bilezikian
With inspirations from Christine Burkholder

For anyone who has ever designed an early childhood classroom from scratch or ever tried their hand at a general makeover, you know the decision-making can be staggeringly complex. The choices we make multiply beyond comprehension. The act of classroom design is indeed imperfect and does not come with a one-size-fits-all manual. There is so much to think about; every classroom is different not only because of its physical attributes (i.e., shape, size, amenities) but because of those unique individuals who play and abide within its four walls. Some classrooms may have features (i.e., built-in storage or shelves, support columns, angled walls, or high ceilings) that can possibly interfere with a design. There are a plethora of rules and regulations—which are sometimes conflicting—from licensing, accreditation, quality rating assessments, and safety and health authorities. For example, after considerable gymnastics with moving about the furniture in a rather small space, you finally find a way to include all the required learning centers when the fire marshal shows up and declares there are no clear pathways to the exits.

We could simplify these challenges by saying we need a new approach to designing environments, but that would be misleading. We are forced into new approaches on a consistent basis by factors and forces beyond our control. For example, in one state a new licensing regulation is requiring 12 inches of low shelving for every infant. In order to comply with this new requirement, shelves need to be added to the already cramped room and the space for tummy time becomes nonexistent. Indeed, designing a classroom is complex. It seems like sometimes these forces fray the edges of best practices until our spaces become diluted environments that work for neither children or teachers, but rather quietly against. Furniture is for storage and meeting licensing requirements. Carpets are for sitting and counting, naming objects, and learning the letters of the alphabet. Walls are for displaying commercially purchased posters, required paperwork and daily schedules. All the while, children’s lives and childhood have been forever changed. These examples may be oversimplifications but, if not addressed with a high degree of stewardship, they can lead to the dilution of intended design outcomes—classrooms that are created for laughing, playing, singing, and embracing the importance of being little.

 Designing Heart-Centered Classrooms

The very first thing you need to do before you begin the journey of designing heart-centered classrooms is to think about what you most value in children: Do you value children who are capable… competent… curious? Your classroom should reflect these values, as well as the children’s needs and interests. The furniture, furnishings, and materials in your classroom will showcase what you believe is important and what you value most in children. If the classroom is designed with integrity and with your values in mind, the children will reflect these values as they come to understand their own capabilities and competencies.

For ideas on how to get started with designing heart-centered classrooms with the focus on empathic and biophilic design thinking, click HERE

Test Block

A conversation with Sandra Duncan, Rae Pica and Heidi Veal discussing how standardized classrooms are boring and uninspiring. Join us as they share ways to bring novelty into your classroom. Click here for the full interview.

Although a bird may seem like an unlikely role model for teachers, the bowerbird, a small native of Australia and New Zealand, has a lot to teach us about early childhood classroom design. This amazing avian artist and architect goes to extraordinary lengths to build and decorate his nest or bower. Spending countless hours searching and collecting, the male bowerbird beautifies his habitat with broken bits of colorful glass, fragments of holiday garland and tinsel, shiny gum wrappers and milk caps, pieces of plastic and metal, tiny morsels of beautiful berries, and multicolored bits of yarn and string. His collections are painstakingly arranged according to type of material and color—especially the color blue, which is a favorite of the female bowerbird.

Read more here

 

The classroom environment is an essential component for maximizing learning experiences for young children. Inspiring Spaces for Young Children invites teachers to enhance children’s educational environment in a beautiful way by emphasizing aesthetic environmental qualities that are often overlooked in early childhood classrooms, such as nature, color, furnishings, textures, displays, lighting, and focal points.