Snacks and meals are timed appropriately for children. As children spend more and more hours in child care institutions, we must begin to re-evaluate the environments in which we work. This is one of our gifts as teachers and providers, but it can also work against us unless we organize and use our finds creatively. Check out this list to see if your center has an institutional look, or if you are beginning to create a home for our children. Children can spend up to 12,500 hours within a long child care setting, more hours than the child will spend at school - an institution.
Most institutions require conformity and compliance.
The trappings of an institution act as barriers to the development of warm, trusting relationships, a sense of community, and a feeling of ownership and belonging. Notice boards bristling with notices for everyone and no one in particular which are never noticed, never culled, or tidied. Colored footprints or fluorescent arrows leading to notices are condescending and demeaning, and are not usually removed at the end of the event. Boxes overflowing with lost property that no one appears to have lost. Forlorn, weary, worn equipment which is shunted around in haphazard room arrangements which indicates the adults hold the power.