Classroom Environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Classroom Environment - Essay Example This supports the school philosophy where it states that â€Å"Creative Care Preschool provides a clean, safe and nurturing environment. It offers rich, age-appropriate learning materials/ experiences for children, carefully planed and prepared by teachers each day. Creative Care Preschool is a place where children free to explore, touch, experiment and ask many of their questions, supervised by adults in school so that they can discover the answers to these questions themselves.† (Creative Care Vision, Mission and Philosophy, 2010, p. 1) In general, the classroom environment should reflect the goals and expectations of the teacher. It will also dictate somehow to the children how they will behave (Brewer, 2001). Space allocation reflects the priorities of the curriculum. According to Boulton-Lewis & Catherwoods (1995), when the quality of the physical environment declined, teacher restriction and control increased, the teacher’s behavior became less friendly, the students became less interested and involved, classroom rules increased, and conflict among children increased. Likewise, Kepler (1995) observed that the learning environment influences, and directly contributes to, children’s behavior and levels of learning. It seems teachers at Creative Care Preschool are well aware of this, as they have structured the physical environment in such a way that children feel free to be themselves. The environment is one that is open and stimulating in order to encourage children to participate, explore, and learn. A stimulating environment provides the teacher with many opportunities to observe where a child’s interests lay as well as those areas the child may be tentative in (Danoff, Breitbart & Barr, 1977). The environment should also be flexible and spontaneous to accommodate children’s play that is essential in a preschool classroom, and is