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Beautiful....but Appropriate?
September 23, 2015
A failure is not always a mistake. It may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
-B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), American pychologist

The Portuguese website, Idealista, ran a story, "The most beautiful day care centers in the world : 15 schools for children where you would like to leave your children," which featured photos of the 15 schools.

Once you have finished checking out these photos, come back and click “Comment on this article” or “Post a Comment” and give your opinion on whether these schools, which are certainly striking to the adult eye, really create appropriate environments for young children (and teachers).

Contributed by Kirsten Haugen





Inspiring Spaces for Young Children

The classroom environment is an essential component for maximizing learning experiences for young children. Inspiring Spaces for Young Children invites teachers to enhance children’s educational environments in a beautiful way by emphasizing aesthetic environmental qualities that are often overlooked in early childhood classrooms, such as nature, color, furnishings, textures, displays, lighting, and focal points.

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Comments (96)

Displaying 5 of 96 Comments   [ View all ]
Janet · December 23, 2015
United States


The best one i saw was the greatest kindergarten in the world on TED in kyoto japan. Included children climbing, playing in water, hiding in boxes. Architecture was created with children in mind. Young children ....and they could be easily observed.

Paula McMillen · December 17, 2015
Kinderplatz of Fine Arts
Ft. Worth, Texas, United States


While all of these play areas are eye-catching and a work of art, I wonder what the underlying message is for our children and our future. Does everything have to be greater and grander and never done before? I wonder what would happen if all the money spent on these areas could have been spent improving our natural world and parks by natural hills and tunnels and natural landscape mazes? Why do we need to clutter our world with more? Why not take care of what we have? Wouldn't this be a greater lesson?

Margo Sipes · December 16, 2015
Downtown Baltimore Child Care, Inc
Baltimore, MD, United States


These play spaces are all aesthetically pleasing and provide lots of opportunity to gross motor, physical play. I expect they will also offer practice social negotiation about turn taking, as well. However, they all seem to be missing loose parts for children to use creatively in ways that require complex thinking skill and problem solving. What would happen if loose parts were added?

Kim Draughn · December 16, 2015
Lulus Child Enrichment Center
Taylorsville, North Carolina, United States


Although the playgrounds were very clean looking I prefer the natural outdoor playground like the Nature Explore classrooms.
Where are the sticks,rocks and other natural loose parts?

Vilma Reynoso · October 14, 2015
Head Start
Merced, California, United States


I like the architecture aspect of the differnt countries/cities. I do like the limited amount of toys. I do believe that here in USA we saturated our classroom with so much stuff, that is too distracting. The majority of the photos have rooms that allow the children to use imagination and play pretend, what is wrong with that? Less is more, so the less we put in the classroom, the more children will use their imagination to create and develop critical thinking. I have to do site visits and every time I get into one of our classrooms, I get a headache. Too many posters, kids stuff on the walls. Every corner has toys and abundance of toys that leave very little to the imagination. I know that my thoughts are not the norm, but it's my opinion. Less is more.



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