Guidecraft, designers of versatile children’s furniture, inherently educational toys, and creative learning spaces for over 50 years, is offering a homeschool makeover to one lucky subscriber to its YouTube channel. One family will win $2,000 of quality learning furniture and educational toys as well as expert design advice for their home learning space. Individuals can subscribe to Guidecraft’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/guidecraft. The winner will be selected on September 15 and receive personalized advice on setting up his or her own learning lab using Guidecraft furniture and toys.
Lauren Magee, who suddenly found herself in a situation familiar to parents around the world, with her children distance learning indefinitely due to the outbreak of COVID-19, decided to document her family’s journey and home transformation through a vlog series titled Lauren’s Learning Lab. Magee is an architect, former educator, and the mother of a 3-year-old, 7-year-old, and 9-year-old. To help other parents navigate this new set of challenges, throughout the series, Magee offers her unique expertise gained from years of teaching, serving on school boards, and designing classrooms and schools worldwide as the Director of Architecture and Environmental Design at Guidecraft
Guidecraft’s mission is to create objects of lasting importance that enrich the lives of children. For over 50 years, Guidecraft has designed holistic classroom and home-based environments and learning platforms for children of all ages. Guidecraft’s natural, open-ended toys unleash a child’s imagination through free, unstructured play. The home furniture lines focus on engaging children in artistic, literary, and dramatic play activities, while the preschool furniture collections straddle the needs of both teachers and parents to provide authentic, nature-inspired, and sensory choices in some uniquely beautiful ways.
“Like many other parents, I felt wholly unprepared to have my three young children home from school indefinitely and am figuring out day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how to balance their needs with the other demands of work and life. Drawing from my experience as an architect and former educator, I am designing my way out of some of these challenges by creating a home-based learning environment for – and with – my children and sharing what we learn with viewers,” states Magee.
Each episode of Lauren’s Learning Lab addresses a different topic related to supporting children’s cognitive development and social-emotional growth and includes research-driven evidence and methods of teaching inspired by the Montessori and Reggio Emilia approaches. Invited guests on the series include renowned early childhood educators, specialists, and authors so that a wide breadth of expertise and information may be shared with parents eager for professional advice.
Magee’s years of experience as an executive-level architect, her role as an associate professor of architecture at Drexel University and Illinois Institute of Technology, her recent tenure as an elected school board member, and her current work with students and teachers at all levels make her uniquely qualified to design inspired learning environments.
Subscribe to the Guidecraft YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/guidecraft to view Lauren’s Learning Lab videos. The contest ends at midnight on September 15, 2020. The winner will be chosen at random from all subscribers, and there is no cost to enter. The winner will be announced on the Guidecraft Instagram account at this link https://www.instagram.com/guidecraft_official/.
