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 ;-)

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