When Marcia Durazo signed up for a free $5,000 classroom makeover from the New Mexico Child Care and Education Association (NMCCEA), she wasn’t expecting to win. All Durazo knew was that she was ready to take the steps toward creating a better space for the children at Our Little Kids Preschool.

As an early childhood educator, Durazo is constantly looking for ways to provide her students with a better education. She began her business running home child care in 2016 at 18 years old. After graduating from Central New Mexico Community College in 2019, she opened Our Little Kids Preschool to continue child education.

When Durazo found out the NMCCEA was hosting a competition for a makeover in collaboration with Kaplan Learning Center, she submitted her application with a hopeful heart. She got a call on Aug. 30, a few days after she had applied, announcing that Our Little Kids Preschool would be the recipients of a $5,000 makeover consulted by design expert Sandra Duncan, who specializes in creating designs to connect young children to their early learning environments, communities and neighborhoods.

Duncan has consulted and designed for classrooms across the world and has taught college courses on learning environments, so Durazo was excited to learn they would be working together.

“When I first started, my idea was to make the classroom colorful and have a bunch of plants and stuff. So when I opened my center, I started the same way I learned. Colors, a bunch of stuff on the walls, all of that,” Durazo said. “It was exciting to learn I would be working with someone who’s famous for designing classrooms.”

Durazo and her team had visited another child care center in town, East Gate Kids early learning center, and after seeing the school’s design and commitment to creating a better and more natural learning environment for children, Durazo knew she wanted to recreate the magic at her school.

“We got inspired to bring that quality of environment to our center and to provide that to the children in the South Valley,” she said. “I saw the makeover as an opportunity to accomplish the goal of bringing a great environment to my center.”

On Monday, Duncan arrived at the preschool, ready to teach the Our Little Kids Preschool staff ways to incorporate natural environments that help encourage students to pursue knowledge in a comfortable setting. Duncan emphasized ways to design the classroom that not only helped the children, but were cost effective to the center.

“You don’t have to have brand new anything to make a great classroom,” Duncan said. “You can do so much with so little and work with what you have to invest in your community more. Even if you don’t have the money to do it right away, we can do things step by step and make something wonderful.”

The school closed down on Tuesday for renovations and reopened the next day with new furniture, courtesy of Kaplan Learning Center. The new design allowed for space for a new play fireplace, a small gray couch and a new play kitchen.

Elizabeth Groginsky, secretary for the Early Childhood Education and Care Department, said the partnership is important and will elevate the work of the NMCCEA and child care providers like Durazo.

“When child care providers gain knowledge and professional development, the children reap the benefits of the changes that directors, owners and teachers will make,” Groginsky said.

“We want to make sure that the environment the families are sending their children to really reflect the quality and also create a space where children feel respected and valued,” Groginsky added. “It’s important that we all really begin to think about how important it is to have well-designed spaces for young children to improve classroom management, but also to help facilitate child-led activities and help our educators really be able to better observe and plan and document children’s development and growth.”

Sometimes early childhood classrooms can be noisy and overstimulating to young children, leading to challenging behaviors, and decreased engagement and learning. Sandra Duncan—coauthor of Through a Child’s Eyes: How Classroom Design Inspires Learning and Wonder—compares the early childhood classroom to Times Square and explains why young children need comforting, secluded spaces where they can refresh and regroup just like adults do! Here are her 3 ideas for creating nurturing spaces of seclusion in the early childhood classroom, away from the hubbub and the noise.

Have you ever been to Time Square? It's quite a busy place, isn't it? Especially on New Year’s Eve! Even when it's not New Year's Eve, Time Square can be a real assault on your senses. It's filled with bright colors, loud noises, tires screeching, and horns blaring. It's got lots of interesting smells, blinking and neon lights all over the place, and of course, crowded sidewalks. 

Hi there. I'm Dr. Sandra Duncan and I'm co-author of a Gryphon House book called Through a Child's Eyes: How Classroom Design Inspires Learning and Wonder. I'm all about designing inspiring environments for young children. 

Think about your typical early childhood classroom. It's a lot like Times Square, isn’t it? It's noisy. It's overcrowded. There's fluorescent lights glaring from above. There's bright colors. There's lots of conditions and the elements of an early childhood classroom that are very similar to Times Square. 

There's one difference, however, between Times Square and a classroom. The difference is, as an adult, you can get away from Times Square. You can get away from the chaos, the noise, the smells, and everything that's happening on that crowded sidewalk. You can get away from it! All you have to do is step into a restaurant. Maybe if you're a tourist, you can go back to your hotel for a nap. You can step inside a department store. You can go to the city park. There's lots and lots of options that you can do as an adult to get away from the hustle and bustle of Times Square. 

But a child on the other hand is unable to escape a classroom. A child is unable to escape the busyness and the noise—the overwhelming chaotic environment day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, and so on. You get the point. They are forced to stay within that chaotic environment. They have no other choice. Their responses to this chaotic environment are often increased challenging and negative behaviors, and decreased engagement, focus, and of course, learning. 

Indeed, classroom environments are important because they send messages of emotional stability, emotional security, and safety. These messages have become especially important after COVID-19. One of the most basic emotional development needs of the human spirit is opportunity for seclusion—the chance to go back to your hotel room for a nap, getting out of the chaos of Time Square. Children need to have the opportunity just like adults to be alone for even a few precious seconds, to be able to take time away from the hubbub of the classroom. 

Whether they know it or not, children at some point need a chance to rewind, refresh, and regroup, just like an adult. Yet the opportunity for seclusion in early childhood classrooms is pretty rare. It's one of the vastly overlooked elements of classroom design. 

We have lots and lots of excuses for not providing seclusion in our classrooms. We might say, “Oh my gosh, we don't have enough room. We have limited space! I don't hardly have enough room to get all the required learning centers in and yet alone, a place for seclusion.”  We might not believe that there's enough space in our room to dedicate to a type of space like seclusion. Or we might feel, “Gee! I want to be able to see every child every second of the day! So therefore, I don't think this seclusion idea is a good idea.” It also might be because of our lack of equipment. If you look in early childhood classroom catalogs with furniture, there's really not much out there in terms of furniture design for seclusion. But regardless of the reasons why we don't include seclusion areas in our classroom, it needs to be a very, very important element of our classroom design. So I've got three ideas for helping you create places of seclusion. 

1. Rethink Your Space

The first idea is to rethink your space. Just critically look around at the size of each and every learning center that you have. Now think about the children's usage of that center. Based on the amount of furniture in the particular space and the number of children using that furniture, is there too much square footage that has been dedicated to that space? How about the idea of stealing a few square feet from a larger center and allocating that stolen space to a smaller destination of refuge? 

2. Scrounge Your Space

Idea number two is to scrounge your space. Stand in the middle of your classroom and just look around. Are there any unoccupied spaces, like an empty wall? What could you do with this empty wall to make it a place of solitude? You might think, “Wow, I don't have the slightest idea what to do!” But could you find a sturdy laundry basket, add a small pillow in the basket, and add a flimsy piece of cloth so the child can get in the basket and throw the cloth over his head? This will just make him feel that he's in a place of solitude. 

Or how about taking off the door of a closet and in the lower part of the closet, perhaps there's a space that you can create for a child to be alone. Add cozy elements for snuggling up. Even if it's in the bottom of a closet, it makes a perfect place. You can even add a battery powered light that the child can flip on as he goes into that small snugly space. 

3. Reimagine Your Space

Idea number three is to reimagine your space. Try considering this idea of what I call “topsy-turvy furniture” as a way of reimagining your space. For example, could you turn a small table upside down and drape a flimsy piece of cloth over the four legs? This is instant refuge and instant seclusion! 

Got an extra crib hanging out in the storage closet that you're never going to use in the infant room? What about sawing the four legs off from the crib, turning the crib on its side, adding some lounge-chair cushions, adding a few pillows, and of course, adding some books to make it a terrific place for solitude for one child? You could also drape some flimsy material over the top and on the sides of the crib for an extra sanctuary effect.

Reducing the chaotic effect of Times Square in your classroom can have a dramatic impact on children, especially the emotional impact of safety and of security and of emotional stability.  Start now by creating at least one place where children can find solace. Thank you.

ORIGNAL POST: https://www.gryphonhouse.com/resources/3-ideas-for-creating-nurturing-spaces-for-seclusion-in-the-early-childhood

In this interview we discuss the four design beliefs or pillars that Dr Duncan starts with when designing a space for children - nature aligned, heart centric, sensory based and authentically inspired. Dr Duncan explains the main benefits of designing spaces using this framework and how this can be applied to any setting or childcare centre, whatever size or wherever you are in the world.We also touch on her soon to be published book: The Honeycomb Hypothesis: How infants, toddlers and two-year-olds learn through Nature Play. This is a fascinating new way of thinking about play and how we can supporting children’s learning through the way that they play naturally.

View Video HERE