Recognising the sort of spaces that children are seeking out or trying to create for themselves is fascinating, and yet often overlooked. Just like adults, children have preferred kinds of learning spaces. Getting the range of available learning spaces right for children will help to set the scene for learning to take place. Noticing how the children want to use spaces in your setting will help you to plan flexible, responsive areas that are in tune with their needs.
Many children need, and seek to create enclosed spaces. There are times when children just want to be on their own, or with a few selected friends. Children don't always want to be in a big group all of the time.
Offering cosy spaces that children can retreat to, or providing children with the resources to create them, is particularly important in settings that children attend for many hours a day.
Some children become more confident within an enclosed space. Often, they will talk more, engage more deeply and reveal more about their skills within a smaller more secure context.
For such children, an enclosed space will offer emotional security. It can be a space where they can watch from, or where they can just 'be' until they feel ready to join the activities on offer.
Enclosed spaces can reduce the distraction caused by extraneous noise, which may interrupt a child's concentration. Enclosure can protect a child's 'creation', preventing others from knocking it over, or damaging it as they move through the setting.
With imagination and the right basic resources, enclosed spaces can be created easily, both inside and outside. Sometimes, simply repositioning furniture and equipment will create enclosure.
Gathering together a collection of pack-away resources like pop-up structures, blankets, drapes and pegs, mosquito nets and natural materials to create screening will inspire a variety of enclosed spaces. Making these resources available to the children to use adds a whole new dimension and relevance to the spaces created together or by the children independently.
Sometimes adults can't fit into an enclosed space. The space restrictions therefore force the adult to step back, watch, listen and note, giving the children space and time to develop their own ideas and lead the play, supported by sensitive intervention only when necessary.
Your observations of the sort of spaces that children seek out are essential in creating an Enabling Environment. Consider where the children gather naturally in your setting. What do they do there? How could you enhance and extend what they are showing you about the places they like?
ASK YOURSELF
- Which of your children enjoy using enclosed spaces?
- How do they use them, when, why?
- Do you let children create their own enclosed spaces? Why (not)?
- Do you interfere too much in children's enclosed spaces?
Elizabeth Jarman is an early years consultant specialising in developing effective learning environments. See www.elizabethjarmanltd.co.uk
- Friendly spaces, part 2 will be published on 17 July
REFLECTING ON PRACTICE
To make the most of this series:
- Photograph areas of your setting, when empty and in use.
- Ask yourself: When, how and why do the children use (or avoid) a certain area in your setting? How does this area look, sound and feel from the child's perspective?
- Record your observations and ideas about your environment in a journal and discuss them with your staff team.
- Ask yourself: Do 'adult ideas' about an area restrict what children should do there?
- Reflect on your findings and possible changes you could make to improve your learning environment.
- Monitor the impact of any changes made through photographs, discussions with staff, children and their families.
CASE STUDY: LARK CHILDREN'S CENTRE, PLYMOUTH
Staff at Lark Children's Centre are keen that children see the centre as theirs - their space, their building. Staff observed how children were using the learning environment and repeatedly noticed that many were seeking out small, enclosed spaces.
There was lots of transporting behaviour going on. Everything from the home corner was regularly being moved to the small space under the easels or even into the toilets!
The layout of the setting was very 'open'. It offered few enclosed, semi-private small areas. In response, staff decided to create several across the children's centre to facilitate the play they were noticing.
Elizabeth Knight, early years co-ordinator, says, 'Small spaces can give children security. They can feel ownership in a small space. Some of our children, especially the timid ones, need a small space to watch from - to observe the play being modelled by others. They sometimes need to watch for a long time before they want to try something new.
'Some of our children were starting imaginary games in the home corner at early morning quiet time, but then abandoning them as too many other or younger children joined them.'
In this instance, manager Nikki Stephenson provided a selection of pegs and materials, which the children used to create a new space by attaching the drapes to the existing home corner.
They were also involved in redesigning this space, selecting colours, materials and resources to create an area that was theirs. The curtains allowed them to change the space and enclose it if they wanted to. This was a successful, flexible space that made the most of the existing structure of the building.
More information
- The 'A Place to Talk' series - In Children's Centres, In Extended Schools, In Pack-Away Settings and In Pre-schools - is available from www.elizabethjarmanltd.co.uk/store at £6.49 each, packed with ideas to create different sorts of learning spaces;
- Children, Spaces, Relations: Meta project for an environment for young children, edited by Giulio Ceppi and Michele Zini, Domus Academy Research Centre/Reggio Children.
LINKS TO EYFS GUIDANCE
- EE 3.3 The Learning Environment
- L&D 4.1 Play and Exploration
- L&D 4.2 Active Learning.
