Enabling Environments
What is an enabling environment?
Children are always excited to explore and learn new things. But in order to ensure they do that safely, it’s very important to create enabling environments. These environments are designed as a learning space where children can have access to the best development opportunities.
The main focus when creating an enabling environment is to maintain the fundamental role of making learning safe and enjoyable. In order to create the best enabling environment, childcare experts need to focus not only on the physical environment, but also the emotional one.
A great enabling environment plays a massive role when it comes to any child’s development and learning.
Normally, children thrive and learn much faster if they are in a supportive and helpful environment. This is what allows children to explore, play and learn at their own pace.
Creative ideas to help design enabling environments
Ideally, you want to have imaginative play sessions where children get to create their own worlds and implement those ideas in an exciting way.
This can involve both adult led and child led play.
Preparing your Indoor Environment
Once you learn how enabling environments support play, you want to ensure that your indoor environments also support this.
These spaces need to stimulate children, while also offering a medium which helps accommodate any changes.
They need to be planned, but also flexible to help enhance the learning process. As long as the environment is rich and filled with interactions, it will all help to create an enabling environment.
Outdoor Environments
Outdoor enabling environments are great because they are less restrictive and also have lots of stimuli that children can interact with. There’s also a much larger scale, while also bringing in teamwork opportunities and connecting with nature.
Of course, there are safety concerns and guidelines when it comes to outdoor play that you need to take into consideration.
Emotional environments
As we mentioned earlier, enabling environments are not only about the physical environment. They also focus on the emotional setting and the overall atmosphere. Children area very conscious and aware of how others react and how they interact with other children.
If you want the enabling environments to be utilised at their full potential, then that means children need to feel settled and safe within that space. Having the support of a key person is extremely important and that can lead to incredible results in the long term.
Encouraging self-selection
Self-selection is important for children because it allows them to access resources that fit their requirements.
Loose parts play and junk modelling can play a crucial role in this.
Self-selection can help children to feel safe as they get to pick activities based on what they want. It’s a crucial aspect because it focuses on children developing their own sense of independence. They get to pick those activities they are interested in, which can aid their development.
What are the enabling environment defined areas?
Defined areas found within EYFS include sand, water, writing areas, role play areas and creative areas. The idea is to have a welcoming environment where children are able to showcase their ideas while bringing in their own perspective in an exciting way.
That’s what makes these enabling environments very helpful when it comes to child development, since they are varied and provide children with a large variety of different opportunities.
Conclusion
Making the most out of enabling environments is extremely helpful since it gives children a new perspective on learning. It encourages children to study new things, learn something new and constantly adapt to the current world and use various stimuli to adapt and interact with ideas at their own pace.
One thing is certain, creating an enabling environment is very useful when it comes to enabling kids to pursue their passion. These enabling environments are freeing.
It gives you access to incredible ways to encourage children to try out the things they want and learn in a more efficient way!
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