While school districts are already mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to provide qualified preschool students with the specialized services they need to succeed in school, an increasing number of districts are expanding their services to include mainstream preschoolers.

 
The trend among these districts is to consolidate and centralize all early education curricula in an Early Childhood Center, which, according to Moss & Associates, should be “designed to emulate the principles of 21st century pedagogy: holistic, flexible, collaborative, contextual, and tailored to the individual’s specific needs.”

 

For children under age six, learning should not be a task but an adventure of discovery, which should be mirrored in the facility design, according to the firm.

As the first structured institutional setting that most preschoolers will encounter, early childhood centers should be warm, welcoming, and familiar the firm said.

 

In line with the idea of promoting “serious play,” spaces should be open and proportionally scaled, such as hallway windows that let children see into a room.

Accommodating diverse needs, such as language barriers or physical, mental, or emotional challenges, can be achieved by having more space allocated for each child, given the individualized instruction present in early childhood center curriculum, according to the firm.

 

The arrangement and configuration of instructional spaces must accommodate multiple activity options and support specific diagnostic and therapeutic services, firm officials said.

 

“Data from the National Clearing House for Educational Facilities indicates that more than 80 percent of all four-year-olds attend some kind of preschool program, with 39 percent enrolled in some kind of public program,” the firm reported. “In many districts, however, early intervention programs and related services are scattered among different schools.”

 

Some teachers and therapists travel to several schools each day for individualized learning sessions that often take place in cramped, makeshift spaces, officials said.

“Centralizing these services in an [early childhood center] enhances the effectiveness of teachers and other instructors and enables them to collaborate more easily with each other,” officials said. “Most importantly, it gives them more time to spend with students.”

 

The centers are also more efficient in their use of resources and tax dollars, according to the firm.

The Ann Reid Early Childhood Center in Naperville recently earned LEED Silver certification as the first newly constructed public school dedicated to early childhood education.

 

The school, which opened in the summer of 2010, was designed by Chicago and Darien, Ill.-based architecture, engineering, and construction firm Wight & Company as a “learning village” to accommodate the diverse educational needs of more than 300 children aged three to five.

 

Elgin, Ill.-based Lamp Inc. served as the general contractor on the $11 million project.

 

The 48,000-square-foot building’s exterior has a familiar residential appearance, with pitched roofs, siding, and windows intentionally placed to reflect the natural surroundings of its suburban neighborhood.

 

To make children feel at ease, the space was divided into a “learning village” of four educational neighborhoods that are connected to each other via communal areas and provide multiple opportunities for interaction. The corridors, or neighborhood “streets,” have various instructional wall surfaces and built-in manipulatives, e.g., letter blocks on skewers in hallways.

 

Design officials said the goal was to create visible opportunities to connect children with nature.

 

“The children at Ann Reid get a firsthand experience of the sustainable landscape design from windows that frame seating areas that are snuggled within the millwork and finished with cushions,” said Kevin Havens, director of design at Wight. “Just outside the windows rain is celebrated on stone pathways that follow sweeping curves to maximize the opportunity for infiltration before a last-stop catch basin.”

 

Sustainable features include perimeter landscaping with bioswales and rain gardens with indigenous plantings. 

 

“The school district and Naperville community wanted to incorporate as many green elements into this project as the budget allowed, and we’re proud to have helped them achieve this goal,” said Mark Wight, chairman and chief executive officer. 

 

The facility also includes windows along the lower wall in classrooms to allow light to enter and meet the district’s intent to encourage students to be more engaged with nature.

 

Considered the first new construction on the community college’s Gresham campus in 30 years, the center will be operated by and serve as a regional headquarters for Head Start, which is a national child development program run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The building will also provide a new home for the community college’s early childhood education program and space for approximately 60 college students studying the subject. 

 

The $5.4 million, 23,500-square-foot center was designed by Mahlum Architects of Portland and will be constructed by Chicago-based Walsh Construction. The building is expected complete by the summer of 2011.

 

"The current program is housed in inadequate facilities," says Kurt Haapala, an associate principal with Mahlum Architects. "It’s in buildings that are temporary facilities which weren’t really designed to support children’s needs."

 

The new center will feature eight classrooms capable of housing 124 children in half-day sessions. Each classroom will contain low windows that children can easily see out of, as well as 30-inch deep walls with room for storage, window seats, and places where children can crawl and play.

 

"It’s really important at that age that they develop core competencies – fine and gross motor skills for example," Haapala says. "So we tried to create environments that were good quality indoor environments with good lighting and good comfort.

 

"The outside play area and interior classrooms are all about experiential-based learning – places where children can crawl up and see the world differently," he adds. "In certain areas, we incorporated in light and shadows, hot and cold, contrasting colors – all of these types of things help small human beings understand the world better. We also designed some of the rooms and equipment to be at their scale, so there are little toilets, little sinks, and little spaces to crawl up on, like balcony windows."

 

Outdoor play areas, including a "farm" with garden area, will be constructed of soft surfaces. Large windows will provide views into and out of exterior play zones for children. The building will also house a kitchen, where meals for 13 Head Start programs in the Gresham area will be prepared. Children will be able to see into the kitchen and watch staff cook and prepare meals.

 

"Some kids are passive learners," Haapala explains. "That is to say, if there is an activity going on that they don’t want to participate in and they are off in the distance observing, they are actually participating, just in a different way. So we’ve created these little nooks that actually look out into corridors so kids can crawl in and feel comfortable and safe in the environment and observe teachers working with other children, or teachers working with college students."

 

The Early Childhood Center was designed with as much an emphasis on observing as it was on playing and learning. College students can view into the windows of the same nooks and crannies their subjects are exploring. Mahlum Architects has also proposed a camera and audio system for the facility, allowing students and faculty to watch children interact from the building’s collegiate classrooms.

 

"College students will be able to actually use the technology to zoom in and display images of the children on screens in the adult classrooms," says Haapala.

 

The center will include a family welcome room with fireplace and sofas. The building is expected to earn LEED Silver certification and feature a variety of green elements, including a rooftop solar array, heavily insulated walls, clerestory lighting, and radiant heating in the floors.