Our learning environments are thoughtfully prepared, aesthetic, and change
based on the rights and interests of the children and adults who inhabit them.
Click the image to visit our 3-d virtual tour.
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The building's thoughtful layout welcomes you in and encourages you to explore, to curiously nose around its hallways. The use of warm colors, the infusion of nature, and the chronicles of children's lives that decorate the walls similar to a family album gets you excited about what is to come for you and your child. [Our school] kinda looks like a huge, huge, huge town. |
Our community spaces are considered as extensions of the classrooms,
and provide numerous opportunities for exploration and learning.
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Outdoor Classrooms
The outdoor classrooms combine traditional equipment with a vast array of natural materials and naturalized landscapes. These include a garden with indigenous plants, a mini amphitheater for storytelling and acting, a water flume for exploration, and a play space, filled with materials with which children create sculptures and other representations of their growing ideas. |
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Theater
The theater is a space for the investigation of largeness. At times, groups of children may use the theater to engage in gross motor kinesthetic exploration, while at other times the theater might be filled with quantities of materials too large to explore in the classroom. |
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Studios
Every classroom at Boulder Journey School has a mini-studio in addition to the shared large studio. Studios house a variety of natural, found, and recycled materials, as well as materials often associated with fine art (e.g. paint, clay, markers, and paper). We view studio spaces as resources for the co-construction, extension, and representation of children’s ideas. |
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Reflection Room
The reflection room is a cozy, quiet, contemplative meeting place for children and adults. It is also a place for discovering the wonders of life in a saltwater fish tank. Documentation of the long-term investigation of an underwater environment is visible in this room. |
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Library
Children and adults visit the library to check out books or to read together in the space. The organization of the library is designed to support children’s autonomy as they select and return their own books. The library space is often used as a meeting place for small groups of children. |
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Teacher Education Room
The Teacher Education Room is a meeting space for Resident Students participating in the Boulder Journey School Teacher Education Program. Educators utilize the room to access the Resource Library and Historical Archives, and to meet together as a faculty and with visitors to the school. |
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Hallways
The hallways are inviting and provoking. Designed by children, families, and educators, the hallways include spaces where children can interact with materials to explore theories about slope and velocity, texture and speed, and other physical properties. Additionally, the hallways are places for socialization and for building relationships, including with several “pets” - both live and inanimate - that welcome the children to school. Greeting and saying farewell to Brownie, Reggie, and Diggum are part of the daily routine for many of the children at Boulder Journey School. |
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Materials Room
The materials room is a home for a variety of open-ended materials that encourage children to develop fluency in communicating through the hundred languages. Children bring their teachers to the space to shop for new materials for the classroom, or to return materials with which they have finished. |