Building Environments and Activities to Engage Children

What's In This Kit?

This training kit helps teachers understand how certain aspects of an early childhood classroom confine children’s minds, bodies, and souls. Teachers will learn to identify these structures in their own classrooms. Teachers will also develop tools to build environments and activities that engage children on all levels. This training program contains the following components:

• Expected training outcomes and learning objectives
• Training research, models, benchmarks
• Preparation and implementation steps
• Handouts
• The article “Are Your Children in Times Square?: Moving from Confinement to Engagement” by Sandra Duncan and Michelle Salcedo
• References and resources
• Training Certificate for Learner �" Certificate of Attendance and Participation

Who's the Target Audience?
The target audiences for this training kit are beginning, intermediate, and advanced Learners who are working with young children (birth through 8 years).

Teacher Skill Level

beginning intermediate advanced

Children's Age Level

infants toddlers preschoolers school-agers birth to 8

Kit Timeline:
Preparation time for this kit is estimated at 1.0 hour. Implementation and actual training time is 3.0 hours, which includes 1.5 hours of Face-to-Face Training and 1.5 hours of Independent Study and an Applied Activity Project. There is a Bonus Activity in the Group Instruction Face-to-Face Training which can add as much as 1 hour to the training time.

Training Outcomes:

By the end of this training, Learners will be able to:

• Identify components of a classroom that can confine children’s bodies, minds, and souls.
• Apply confinement-busting strategies to create classrooms responsive to how children learn.
• Utilize the HOMES Scale for identifying and implementing active learning.

Note: Downloadable PDFs are only available for download in pdf format. Directions for downloading follow immediately after purchase.