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Preparing a Learning-rich Environment

Imagine entering a lush greenhouse. Feel the humid air on your cheeks, smell the sweet lilac, and marvel at the vibrant color palette. A deep breath in through your mouth signals to your brain a taste of metal from a recently used garden hose. With little effort, you survey the room. You scan the tidy, recently swept floor, the maintained tools, and the healthy plants — — all grouped by varietal, size, and color.

This greenhouse is a safe environment — orderly but not overwrought. You feel peaceful, curious, inspired.

Without thinking, you lean in to embrace the vibrant smell of freesia. You wander through this carefully curated environment, letting your senses lead until you notice the plant labels. At that moment, you shift your intention, acquiring new information as you tour through this multi-sensory learning-rich environment for inquisitive visitors and horticulturalists (expert or otherwise).

Now consider unpacking this experience in an early childhood classroom. Reggio Emilia educators have been exploring this concept for decades, preparing classrooms with a deep understanding that environment is crucial to learning. One of the four Reggio Emilia principles is that children should have some control over their learning. Classrooms are equipped with furniture that is just the right size for them, subliminally inviting young explorers to select a material from an open shelf and carry it back to a table that was made just for them. Child-sized furniture and open shelving is a first step towards supporting their physical and emotional safety and ultimately fostering another principle: children develop relationships with peers and learning materials in an environment that they are allowed to explore.

A third Reggio Emilia principle, children must learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, and observing, is interconnected to the previous two while setting everything into motion. Children explore and acquire knowledge through active kinesthetic learning. To engage this principle, educators prepare the environment with multi-sensory investigations, harnessing wonder and responding to curiosities. In these classrooms, children hold math in their hands, science awakens their sense of smell, and they embody literature through yoga and song.

These learning environments engage the senses and awaken inspiration — artfully designed with respect to children and the wonder of learning.

Written by: Beau Kenyon

Discovering gravity and how objects move with
wooden cars and cardboard boxes. 
SolBe Learning. Chestnut Hill, MA
Photo Credit: Silvana Carpio.

Snow Exploration!
Through this provocation,
students work collaboratively
to express their observations, while
making connections with
previous experiences.
SolBe Learning. Chestnut Hill, MA
Photo Credit: Silvana Carpio

Be Supported

We’ve felt the uncertainty that occurs when our children are in the care of someone else. At SolBe, we know you will always be your child’s first teacher; we’re here as a knowledgeable partner in your child’s education.

From our experience, children rise to the intellectual life of those around them, so we are committed to growing as individuals and as a team. You can count on us to provide a warm and engaging learning experience for your little one.

Be Inspired

We’ve spent thousands of hours in classrooms that either overstimulate, underwhelm, or actively prevent educators from delivering the highest-quality education and care. At SolBe, you’ll go beyond the traditional four-walled classroom.

Our award-winning, inventive and uplifting learning spaces stimulate the senses and instill feelings of home-like safety and comfort. They allow for your child’s, and our educators’, changing needs and emotions. They create room for wonder—for learning, and living, outside the lines.

Be Immersed

We’ve seen what’s lost when things are done the way they’ve always been done before. SolBe is an adaptive Spanish exposure program that refuses to accept the status quo.

Our inventive practices grow from the shoulders of giants, with roots in the Reggio Emilia approach, the Montessori method, and well-researched cognitive disciplines that attend to the whole child. We create opportunities to develop character attributes that your child will benefit from for a lifetime. Collaboration. Communication. Independence. Healthy risk-taking. Critical thinking. Emotional awareness. Resilience. Intellectual curiosity. Creative innovation. An authentic love of life and learning.

Be Well

We know what it’s like to forget to feed ourselves—physically, mentally, and emotionally. At SolBe, we understand it’s impossible for you to pour from an empty cup. And we do what we can to keep your cup full.

Our learning ecosystem is designed with children and educators—and you—in mind. Seed-to-table nutrition program. Yoga and mindfulness. An all-inclusive experience so you don’t need to worry about finding time to provide meals, diapers, or wipes (unless you want to). Evening and weekend family programs.