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CCSD59 Early Learning Center

Community Consolidated School District 59 Mount Prospect, Illinois

PreK-12 Education

Early Learning Center inspires curiosity, encourages interaction, and connects to outdoors

This facility, driven by community workshops, offers a setting customized to early learners—colorful curving patterns, places to gather and explore, a large courtyard, and thematic learning gardens.

The 57,000-square-foot center consolidates in one building all early learning programs, previously dispersed at facilities throughout the district.

HIGHLIGHTS

School designed around outdoor areas that encourage learning through play.
Each pair of classrooms connects via a sliding glass door and an integrated therapy room in which specialists help students with specific needs.
Light-filled central corridor offers learning opportunities and views to outdoor spaces.
Family support center helps parents get to know staff while their children acclimate to their new environment.

The Little Blue Door

The child-sized blue door that welcomes students is the first of many features that give the district’s earliest learners “a place that is theirs.”

A Place That’s Theirs – Watch Video

Watch this video to see the ELC’s learning gardens, lively corridors and classrooms, and other highlights. District leaders discuss how the design incorporates the input of staff and improves the attitudes of students, teachers, and parents.

Welcome

The administrative area just off the entry includes a family support center and family learning center.

Exploratories

Corridor breakout spaces called “exploratories” offer curving colorful designs, wall materials that welcome touch, and views of the learning gardens.

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Central Courtyard

A larger courtyard offers more features to keep the senses stimulated and the learning robust: a stone amphitheater and stage, colored concrete and rubber “ribbons” that lead to the building, an embankment slide, a little house, and more.

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Learning Gardens

Three community workshop-inspired themed learning gardens (i.e., fine arts, nature, sensory) not only offer safe outdoor play areas, but also encourage interaction and continued learning.

Learning Beyond the Classroom

Light-filled corridors include a culinary arts space with a child-sized counter (pictured), small stages, and “therapy stairs” used for training children how to climb or as seating for learning sessions.

Motor Skills Zone

A motor skills area with multi-activity space and courtyard views serves children of all needs.

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Materials and Shading

A metal roofing system seamlessly integrates with metal cladding pierced with windows at different heights. The south wall of each classroom bar leans forward to better shade the building and learning gardens.

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Signs They Can Touch

Within the corridor exploratories, wall materials welcome touch and introduce the adjacent learning gardens. For instance, a rough rock wall corresponds to the sensory garden it displays.

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Flexible Meeting Areas

A partition wall between the family learning center and staff center slides open to create a larger gathering area.

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