Caring Spaces, Learning Places

by Jim Greenman

Children deserve to spend their days in well-designed environments that support their needs and stimulate their learning. Adults who spend their days teaching and caring for young children deserve environments that maximize their skills. Caring Spaces, Learning Places is a book of ideas, observations, problems, solutions, examples, resources, photographs, and poetry. Here you will find best of current thinking about children's environments - 360 pages to challenge you, stimulate you, inspire you. This is your book - directors, teachers, parents, trainers, faculty and consultants. Take it to bed. Wear it out. Expect dog ears in no time.

360 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2005

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is full of such good advice I often reference it for educator workshops.

[Courtney Chappell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for my Early education class.

[Lisa M. Guerrero · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who appreciates interior design and understands the importance and relevance of the finer details in creating inviting spaces, it was great to have my ideas and thoughts validated by reading Greenman (2007). I have always been naturally drawn to the types of environments that he describes in this book, and believe whole-heartedly that programs should be inspired by places where we most fully experience the world (p. 86): in parks, museums, travel opportunities and nature for example. One concept that Greenman (2007) considered to be part of the learning environment that I had never taken into consideration was that of time. He believes time and space to be inseparable based on his idea that how we spend our time in any given space influences our perception of that space (p. 82). This for me was very thought provoking as I considered how many hours children spend in child care settings. Many spend their whole day having all of their time being controlled by others only to go home to have their time controlled by their parents who need to get dinner ready and served, give them a bath and head them off to bed. Greenman (2007) puts forth that this causes an inevitable feeling of oppression (p. 82) and in doing so inspires me to create an environment that allows for a feeling of timelessness for children.

[Tim Dunnuck]

One of the best books ever written about early childhood learning environments. Pretty much everything from Jim Greenman is excellent.