First and foremost for Maplewood to be a successful place for children to live and learn is for the environment to emulate home as much as possible. The Maplewood home is separated into two categories, indoor and outdoor. Within these environments children have freedom to explore the kitchen, family room, exploration room, outdoor living room, back garden, front play yard and occasionally the garage. Children are always directly supervised both indoors and outdoors.
We have a larger than normal, fenced-in front and back yard as well as an outdoor living room. Alongside local landscapers and Master Gardeners, we have designed two outdoor spaces. These two spaces are focused on child-centered learning experiences in a diverse natural setting. The yards themselves will offer an abundance of opportunities for children to interact with and learn about the natural world.
Child-initiated activities are often enriched by the teachers outside, and may include music activities, story time, arts and crafts, math, science, and dramatic play. Many of these learning experiences are based on natural cycles such as seasonal changes and life cycles. Children will learn about and from the natural world, celebrating and learning about the changing seasons as well as plant and animal life cycles. Children will be given the chance to develop a deep respect for and connection to the natural world through their investigations and play. Our curriculum is developmentally appropriate and borrows from many great nature education resources and leading practices in early childhood education and child caring as well as child development research.
At Maplewood, because of the Neighborhood, we are fortunate to live and learn on a quiet residential block in East Avondale. While we are close to the excitement of central Avondale, Logan Square, Bucktown, Roscoe Village, West Lakeview and North Center we are lucky to have beautiful neighborhood streets to walk along and local parks and a river walk to visit. We are looking forward to the many partnerships with local businesses which will provide a greater community for our Maplewood children.
Our natural playscape, garden and area under the deck are ever evolving and we are enjoying watching the natural progression as it matures. Our plans for the outdoor yards will feature a small tree forest, dry river bed and stone stream, nature paths, sensory gardens highlighting tasting, smelling, touching, looking, hearing experiences with indigenous plant species, herbs and produce including fruit trees. As the garden and natural playscape take shape our children will have an opportunity to observe, learn about, help with, and eat from our backyard gardens! In our yards we have plans for a sand and dirt pit with large balance scale, grass area with mulch and stone walkways, log gathering area, play cabin, while keeping plenty of space to run and play or mingle in a small tree forest providing additional shade. We will also have the addition of a material’s shed to keep outdoor curriculum materials; these loose parts are important in a nature-based outdoor playscape (i.e. planks, tree cookies, variety of rocks and trunk blocks). We have been gathering a slew of wonderful materials and soon enough we will have a shed to contain them when they are not in use. Children love working with these loose parts and in order to do so we will have a wheel barrow, wagon, buckets and baskets, sleds, shovels, tarps, fabrics and crates.
Our outdoor living room is designed to bring the comforts of home outside. Since we spend most of our day outside we have created this cozy resting and rejuvenating space. Our outdoor living room is set up in many ways like an indoor living room with sofa, coffee table and rug, though we also have a picnic table for the children to use for snack. Often times we will bring baskets of books, blocks and other learning materials to our outdoor living room.
Our garage will on occasions act as an additional open air space (heated during the winters’ coldest days when exploration outside is no longer safe). We will bring learning materials into the garage and set it up to be a mixture of our outdoor living room and exploration room. We will also have a variety of bikes, scooters, and ride-on toys for the kids and if necessary we will use a driveway safety fence to prevent balls and children from venturing into the street. We are also looking forward to visits from Mr. Carlos and Mrs. Mary as they guide us through woodworking projects on our adult and children’s shop benches.
Our Home has been divided into child care space, family space and shared space. When children aren’t spending time outside on our property or on neighborhood excursions, they will spend time in the family room, kitchen, dining room, exploration room and studio.
Our Family Room is set up as such, a typical family room. Children often gather here first thing in the morning, before and after rest time and at the end of the day. We use this time to meet as a group to plan and reflect on our experiences together.
Our Kitchen & Dining Area will be visited for meals and cooking projects. In many early learning environments children rarely have access to the kitchen and spend their meals eating in a dining hall or in most cases, in the classroom. Our Center is different because our children are invited into our kitchen to take an active part in meal preparation activities as they would be free to do so at home. Our kitchen has been child proofed and designed with children in mind. We have many work stations and children are encouraged to participate fully in putting away groceries, checking inventory, looking through cook books to plan meals and engage in food prep and cooking activities. The kitchen has purposefully located fridge, panty, dishware cabinets, and table décor options so children can aid in setting the table. We encourage children to help with clean up, washing dishes and loading the dishwasher whenever possible. All of our children including infants are encouraged to actively participate in meal time. We serve food family style and our kitchen furniture allows children to be independent with low tables and chairs. Meal time as a family can be the one time all the members of the household are able to come together and we emulate this with our Maplewood family at both breakfast and lunch. We are a community of lifelong learners and active explorers, what better time to come together as a family to discuss our experiences and future plans, than meal time.
Our Bathrooms are located in central areas of our main floor and lower level. Unlike many home bathrooms we have one bathroom specifically designed with children in mind. While the bathroom off the Exploration Room on the lower level of our home has many of the typical design elements, ours has been fitted with a child sized toilet and our bathtub has been retrofitted with a changing table.
Exploration Room. Children have opportunities to explore each of the open ended learning centers laced throughout our Exploration Room. It is the room in our Maplewood home most like typical classrooms, yet we’ve gone above and beyond to integrate our green initiative, eco-sustainability, and 9-Rs in the selection of our materials as well as a commitment to bring nature into the classroom. We are fully equipped with learning centers to encourage exploration in language art’s (literacy) & writing exploration, science exploration, math & numbers, small manipulation & perceptual skills, physical development, art, dramatic play, construction and blocks, sensory exploration, games area, practical life skills. However, our Exploration Room will reflect the current children in our program and be equipped with only materials and furniture which best suits their interests with safety in mind.
Our Studio is a off shoot of the Exploration Room and is home to either our messiest of indoor explorations as an Art Studio or converted into a napping room. This room has been carefully designed to embrace the ever growing creative minds of our Maplewood children.
The Infant Area is designed to provide a safe quiet environment for independent free motor exploration and quality caring experiences with your child’s first teacher. The materials and furniture lend itself to a slow and calm experience for infants in our care allowing them to set their own pace for exploration. We have a cozy sofa and feeding area, a changing table which lends itself to all developmental stages of infants – immobile to mobile, a large rug for uninterrupted self-initiated exploration and a quiet area for resting and sleeping infants. Infants will spend much of their outdoor time in the infant area of the patio which in many ways is able to emulate their indoor space.
To inquire about enrollment, review our enrollment process and contact us directly, MaplewoodCDC@gmail.com.