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Effects of Noise on Young Children in Child Care Settings

Dr. Lorraine E. Maxwell, Assistant Professor of Design & Environmental Analysis at Cornel University has recently reviewed the most current studies of the effects of noise in child care centers. She makes the following observations about acoustical quality in centers:

1. Higher ceilings create problems for noise levels.
2. Classrooms without walls or a corridor create higher noise levels.
3. Adjacencies are also important such as the location of the multi-purpose room next to a classroom.
4. Soft surfaces lower the noise level in a classroom.

She states that chronic exposure to noise has been shown to be harmful to children of all ages and can play a major role in language acquisition. Her study documents that many of the problems in child care centers with noise is caused by the inherent design of the center. We can build spaces for children where they can make noise but not create noise levels that are harmful to other children. For a full copy of the article go to www.designshare.com/Research/Lmaxwell/NoiseChildren.htm.

We are committed to creating quality and peaceful environments for children, so we retain an acoustical engineer on all our larger children's projects. We follow the classroom acoustic standards on background noise and reverberation developed by the Acoustic Society of America.

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