Preschool classroom is a special place for little learners and is also called early childhood environment. Children and teacher spend most of their waking hours in there. The classroom set up plays a vital role in overall success of the child’s education.
The classroom’s ambience has to be such as to provide the best learning experience for the child. Albeit it’s important for classrooms to be attractive to the eye, it is equally, if not more important, that they function efficiently.
The work of Sybil Kritchevsky and Elizabeth Prescott (1969) “Planning environments for young children” served as the basis for further development of beliefs about relationships between individuals and early childhood environments.
The authors’ analysis of child care settings in the 1960s led to important observations of the impact of classroom design on the behavior of both children and teachers. These observations show how teachers can modify the environment to achieve new goals or solve existing problems.
Preschool curriculum is diverse and involves different kinds of activities to be conducted during the lesson. Thus the key to a successful implementation of the curriculum as well as management of preschool classroom lies in a proper organization of the areas intended for each type of activities. Children can move freely from one activity to another, giving the teacher an opportunity to give individual attention to children according to their needs.
Children require teacher’s guidance, and the teacher’s behavior becomes directive, when space is awry organized. Teachers get engaged in directing group behavior, and give less time to aid individual children.
A Top Preschool in India understands these delicate issues and offers a perfect early childhood environment for children to be in. First of all, the preschool has philosophy of education and teacher goals, what is co-related with the nature of space. Preschool teacher can evaluate children’s particular developmental needs as to design the space according to the kind of interaction they are accustomed to.
However the settings of preschool classroom may be already fixed; in that case observation of children and teacher is required. Teacher may make notes of what works well and doesn’t work well there. Early childhood specialist takes advantage of as many resources as possible, reading about best possible recommendations of the classroom set up, discussing proposed changes with others, like architect and staff members.
Observation of the changes made helps to understand whether educational goals have been achieved or there is still room for improvement and more changes.
There is definitely more to classroom design than fancy and beautiful furniture and wall paintings. A pleasing classroom interior is of secondary importance to how a design functions in a given situation.
Combination of observations of what works effectively in a particular environment and knowledge of educational philosophy make physical environment a full participant in early childhood curriculum along with other program elements.
Although some alterations are more permanent than others, classroom design is ultimately a tool whose flexibility can be enhanced through planning and modeling before actual change occurs.