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I will take some current pics later and post them for you....
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I could not see your pictures, but Crystals ideas sounds great!
Here I have 1200sq ft on main floor, 1200 in basement and 800 upstairs. I only use 1200 on my main floor, the basement is not finished and I just moved my own kids upstairs in the 2 bedrooms/1bathroom area.
On my main floor I have the kitchen, in which I have a L shaped table, and I used a rolling shelf for microwave cart, and under is 2 shelves. On the top shelf is kids plates, cups, bowls, napkins for self serving, the bottom shelf is art supplies. That is the "art room" only room with no carpet!
Then I have my room. It is mainly my room, unless a baby needs to sleep, or a child is asleep during normal daycare times. I can fit 4 kids in here sleeping. I do not use this room for any other type of play, just naps if needed.
I do have one bedroom down here JUST for the daycare. It has no furniture in it. The closet has the board games, and a set of cubbies for the kids sleeping bags and extra diapers that dont fit in the front cubbies by door. That room in the summer is used for school agers except for from 12-2, then it is the nap room. It has a excersise mat in it, that we use to tumble, put on plays, do circle time, etc.
Then I have the living room. L shaped couch here too. (better for my space then 2 couches) I use this as the newborn to steady walker room. When I have baby babies it has the baby equipment in it, so baby is safe from the older kids.
And I converted my dining room into a toy room. It has 2 tall shelving units. That stores on the lower shelves baby toys, blocks, cars, and books. The higher up shelves holds the larger blocks, stuff with little parts, and puzzles. In one corner of the room is the kitchen, stove, grocery cart and little table.
I should take pictures. I used to think it was too small but then I rearranged and am much more happy. GOod luck!Comment
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I've been working all afternoon! Thanks a million Crystal for all the great ideas.
How does this look? Now at least there is some seperation b/w the home living, books, blocks, manipulatives, etc.
My husband is very excited to have our living room back.
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AWESOME!!! You have done a great job already!Comment
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OMG! what a difference!!! Love your house,very nice.Comment
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That Looks GREAT!!! I think your new room arrangement will work out beautifully. Now it looks like the kids can easily move from the play room down the hall to the dining room/hall play space without even entering the living room. Wonderful! Also, as the parents walk in it seems like they will enter into an entry area to your business instead of the middle of your living room. Let us know how it functions.Comment
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LOL GOLDEN. I believe ya.We converted a double car garage into a rec room then seperated areas with pre-fab deck railing. Simple and reversible. (Georgia requires 35 square feet of usable floor space per child for home daycare. code 290-2-3-13 Section 1a
In case anyone wants to know.)
The biggest cost was the insulated garage door and extra a/c unit......
I wasn't asking for a link because I didn't believe you about the education thing... I just couldn't believe IT.
We have 35 sq foot rule too.Comment
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I have about 150 square foot of dedicated space per kid.Comment
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twinmama
OH MY GOODNESS. My mouth DROPPED when I saw the new pictures!! I can't believe the difference! It looks SO good!! The best part will be tomorrow (I'm assuming you will have dck tomorrow). When they come in, they will be SHOCKED.
I love it, really. Good job!!!
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Thanks guys!! I can't wait for the dcks to get here today! I think they will love it!Comment
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I do more of an old school set up. I have the toy bins and equipment along the wall. I have a room divider with 12 bins dividing the two sides of the room but other than that everything is along the wall.
I don't have table and chairs available to the children during free play. The table is "by invite" only. The large toys have very little flat surfaces on them so the children play with the toys on the floor unless it's something like the block table that has block grids. We don't allow anything on the block table but the blocks that go with it.
I don't have any "hide away" areas. I want all of them out in the open so we can see their entire body every second. I have a tub of cloth books, hand puppets, dolls, and stuffed animals for the older kids. We don't have a book shelf for the kids where books are displayed. I don't have paper books... only thick board books and cloth books.
I don't have any art activities set up for free access. We do all of these things at the table when we are able to do it. No free choice art.
We have two 12 bin cabinets but these are also by invite only. We do one bin at a time and it must be cleaned up before the next one comes out. We have LARGE toy collections of wooden blocks, tinkerytoys, legos, magnetics (with ONE TO ONE adult supervision only), lincoln logs, barbies and accessories for the older girls, and about 100 or so puzzles. With the exception of the blocks we don't do any of these in free play. By invitation only and when we do it they ONLY do it.
We don't have any large stuffed animals or bean bags. The kids sit on the floor and play on the floor. We change diapers on the changing mat on the floor, feed the babies as we are on the floor, do all activities with them that don't require a table (like art and playdoh) on the floor. We don't have any noise toys or battery operated toys in the playrooms.
The room has an overhead camera so I can see every kid all the time. We don't have anywhere for them to "get away" for me time. I need to be able to see them and my staff assistant must be able to see their whole body anywhere in the room from any angle where she is sitting.
We do a lot of rotating kids thru each side of the room and whatever "by invite" activity we have for them for the day. This allows an average of two kids on each side of the room at any given time. There's an adult within a few feet of each kid at all times.
It's the old style way but it works really well for developing great kids. They are all very well behaved and completely self entertained. They are capable of adapting back and forth from the few adult generated activities we do to self or group play very easily. We don't have crazy behavior. We don't have to do massive clean ups. They are capable of cleaning the area they are in and putting toys away exactly as we need them to. We don't have any dumping toys or tear up toys and each toy has it's place. They are organized completely after every play session so they are ready to go for the next. The kids do the entire clean up by themselves with little training. We have little to no toy breakage or abuse of toys.
My philosphy for toys has always been to build huge collections with mutiples of the key pieces in the set. I've always invested the day care monies into collections and make sure I have every piece I need for two to three kids to play at one time. There's no fighting over toys or hoarding toys because I have mutliples of the key pieces. I only buy high quality durable toys and focus on those pieces that allow the kids to play independently for as many years as possible with as little adult involvement as possible.
It's the opposite of the current training for developmentally appropriate play spaces. My focus is on the toy collections not the physical space set up. The physical set up is for the ultimate in supervision as our guidance techniques are based on uber supervision of each kid every second they are up playing. Tons of excellent toys and direct proximal supervison of their free playing of the toys. It's very simple. I like simple.
I would NEVER pass an enviromental rating scale exam or a "QRS" rating!!!! I wouldn't even try ;-)Comment
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here are a couple of pics.....not everything, but an idea of how I set up my environment....Attached FilesComment
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I can't figure out how to implant the pictures.Attached FilesComment
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