U.s. Nursery Environment Settings

Grown in a free way is meaningful for children. And many theories could support it. Free development is what children can choose what they like to do freely based on their own development stage and needs. This paper focuses on this subject, and try to study how the kindergarten environment works as a condition to support the free development of children. The paper uses the comparative method with the example of America. The study is based on three typical kindergartens and the Manual of Policies and Procedures for Child Care Center of California. The results try to summarize the American way in dealing with the free development of children in the perspective of kindergarten environment. This paper is divided into three parts as follow.The basement of the free development of children is that sufficient conditions and possibilities should be provided by kindergarten for children's free development and choice. In the other word, the kindergarten should try to make setups scientific and proper, to make sure the use in a free way by children, and can develop the children's abilities in a general way. The first two chapters analyze the American kindergarten environment just based on this. The chapter one consists of the hard ware environment and the soft ware environment two points. And the hard ware part focuses on the scientific and proper point of environment, while the soft part is what can make the environment works in a free way by children. Chapter two is about the abilities, analyzing how it covers the range of abilities should be owned by children. The last chapter is the revelatory part. The first two parts analyze the way how the American kindergartens make the environment work as a supporter for children's free development. The last chapters search the deep reasons with the academic, cultural and political perspectives, and point out what we can learn from this.Chapter one analyzes the conditions which the kindergartens provide for the free development of children from the perspectives of hard ware condition and soft ware condition. The content of the hard ware condition includes details of the environment, materials, establishments, space, flexible way of settings, and the nature environment. The core of this part is to see how the environment works in a scientific and reasonable way. The soft ware condition is what can make the hard ware condition work in free way for children. It includes the role of teachers, satisfaction of children's needs during the working process and in the settings, making children to be part of the system, the cooperation with the exterior resources.Chapter two analyzes the abilities that are fostered by the environment conditions. The abilities include socioemotional development, cognitive development, motor development.Chapter three has five sections. Based on the above analysis, the first two chapters study what they had done to create such an environment. The last three sections analyze it in a deeper way, try to find out the academical, cultural and social reasons while cooperating it with the conditions of our country, try to discover some common theory, and give suggestion for our country in some moderate way.