Part of a seven-volume series on children's environments, this monograph is a design guide for policy, planning, programming, design, and evaluation of early childhood facilities. The design guide includes 115 patterns for large, medium, and small child care centers in neighborhood and work-place settings. Many of the patterns are appropriate also for family day-care homes, parent-child drop-in centers, nursery schools, kindergartens, and other early childhood development facilities. The patterns are based on a 3-year, federally-funded national research project conducted in the late 1970s. The research evaluated 52 child care centers and outdoor play yards around the United States and Canada, including observations of child-environment interactions, interviews with key staff members, and open-ended interviews with the children. National experts in early childhood development and design were interviewed, and some 2,000 pieces on environment-behavior research and design literature were collected from around the world and analyzed. The results were translated into these 115 patterns for policy planning, project planning, architectural program development, site design and development, overall building organization, individual spaces, and building subsystems. The patterns subsequently have been checked and are reinforced by empirical research as well as design and consulting experience. (Author)