Problem
Every child in the family needs a private place, generally centered around the bed. But in many cultures, perhaps all cultures, young children feel isolated if they sleep alone, if their sleeping area is too private.
Solution
Place the children’s beds in alcoves or small alcove-like rooms, around a common playspace. Make each alcove large enough to contain a table, or chair, or shelves—at least some floor area, where each child has their own things. Give the alcoves curtains looking into the common space, but not walls or doors, which will tend once more to isolate the beds too greatly.
Related Patterns
… the sleeping areas have been defined to be inside the Couple’s Realm (136) and Children’s Realm (137). Beyond that, they are in places facing east to get the morning light - Sleeping to the East (138). This pattern defines the grouping of the beds within the sleeping areas, and also helps to generate the general sleeping areas themselves.
Another version of this pattern, more suitable for adults, is given by Communal Sleeping (186). In both cases, build the individual alcoves according to Bed Alcove (188); if the cluster is for children, shape the playspace in the middle according to the specifications of Children’s Realm (137), and make the path which leads from the beds, past the kitchen, to the outdoors, according to that pattern too. Use the location of dressing areas and closets to help shape the bed cluster and the individual alcoves - Dressing Rooms (189), Closets Between Rooms (198); include some tiny nooks and crannies - Child Caves (203). Give the entire space Light on Two Sides of Every Room (159). And for the shape of this space in more detail and its construction, start with The Shape of Indoor Space (191) …
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 676.