• people for whom they care and trust

Our job is to be patient and protective but not too protective, and encourage their innate sense of adventure: providing them a safe, yet challenging world at their fingertips. We are their guides who know when to step in and when to step back!

Environments that help children do their jobs

Rather than a classroom based school environment, to help them really excel at the job of development, children need an environment that is one part laboratory, one part home, one part classroom, one part natural park, and one part playground:

Make sense of the world:
• Varied lightscape and colorscape: mobiles, mirrors
• Aromascape: natural materials, cooking, scented materials
• Soundscapes: music, conversation, sounds of nature
• Texturescape: natural materials, manipulatives, learning centers
• Time outside in the natural world
• Planned learning centers with sensory-rich learning opportunities

Learn to communicate fully:
• Places and opportunities for conversation, singing, drawing, writing, games, and reading
• Play telephones, computers
• Ample books and reading, dramatic play

Discover and develop all of their bodily powers:
• Well designed diapering, toileting, and meal routines and places that help children develop autonomy and competence
• Time on a comfortable floor
• Time outside with challenges to move in all the ways a child can move with their arms, legs, hands, feet, and whole bodies
• An object-rich environment to handle, manipulate, build, push, pull, haul, put together and take apart: manipulatives, loose parts, push and pull toys, wagons, wheelbarrows, trikes,
• Places that encourage physical and intellectual challenge and problem-solving

Understand how everything works:
• Cause and effect toys, objects from the adult world
• Opportunities for projects and investigations
• Opportunities to build, cook, take apart and put together, and experiment

Deeply connect with people:
• Close attachment to primary caregivers and a place that welcomes and supports parent influence and attachment
• A place that supports consistent routines and engaging rituals, and responsive caregiving
• A place that supports ample touch and physical contact, ample eye contact, and responsiveness to needs
• A place that supports self help, collaborative efforts, and compassionate helping
• A place that supports conversation, social interactions, group projects, and friendship

Final note

Parents look to us to help them understand their child's development. They also want to know the what and why of "the way we do the things we do" (apologies to the Temptations). Using the language of a child's job is a good way to accomplish both. It is also a useful conceptual framework to help look at the experiences that we offer children to make sure that we are helping children do their job.

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