Creating a Home-Like Atmosphere

• The best-designed rooms can fail if they do not imitate the appropriate atmosphere.
• School-age care programs should be comfortable and home-like instead of an institutional environment.
• These programs should allow for a range of solitary and social, active and quiet learning experiences.

Creating a Home-Like Atmosphere

• Use materials that reflect children's home environments.
• Incorporate soft, cozy furnishings to encourage rest and relaxation.
• Include materials, books, and photos that reflect the diversity of the children's backgrounds, cultures, languages, and heritage.
• Incorporate natural materials throughout the room to reflect both the children and their natural surroundings.
• Use beach rocks, driftwood, plants, shells, natural wood furnishings, and wicker baskets.
• Use actual tools and machines that children might have at home.
• Make materials accessible to the children.
• Use flexible materials and loose parts.
• Use soft lighting.
• Ensure the materials are interesting and challenging.
• Use soothing neutral colors as a backdrop for displaying children’s work and photos.
• Use baskets and containers to minimize clutter and provide easy storage, promoting a neat and organized environment.
• The environment should reflect the ideas, ethics, attitudes, and lifestyle of the people living in it.

Sharing Space Challenges

• Many school-age programs are located in spaces shared with other users, often designed for different purposes.
• Challenges of shared spaces include:
  • Inability to take ownership over the environment.
  • Constraints by the property owner on activities.
  • Poorly designed space for supervision, washroom access, and kitchen facilities.
  • Lack of storage space.
  • Lack of safe space to maintain projects over time.
  • Safety and health issues from remnants left by other tenants.
  • Limited access to the space outside normal program hours.
  • Having to set up and dismantle the environment daily, often with children present.