Article Link: http://www.exchangepress.com/article/houses-and-their-resource-rich-activity-pockets/5011315/
In an earlier article ("Addressing Center Size: A Village of Interconnected Houses for Very Large Centers," Child Care Information Exchange, September/October 1996), I discussed what to do if you are planning a very large center or expanding an existing center into one that will serve, say, 100 children. While smaller centers are better, developmentally speaking, with an optimum size of somewhere between 60 to 75 children, many centers are much larger.I suggested two solutions for larger centers. (1) Rather than expanding on the same site, you could create another small center under the direction of a head teacher who serves also as the associate director or site coordinator for that second center, and link them together administratively and financially into a network of child care centers. Or (2) you could decompose the center - both architecturally and administratively - into a village or campus plan concept of interconnected houses, each module of which is under the direction of a head teacher or an assistant director and serves no more than 60 or 75 children.
My own son's children's center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is organized this way, at least administratively. Serving some 250 children from 6 weeks to 6 years of ...