Five years ago the author embarked on an odyssey that would fundamentally change his life as an architect. He and his partner, Dave Deppen, were selected through a very competitive process to design a new Child Development and Family Studies Center in the Sierra Foothills, near Yosemite National Park for Columbia College. The Columbia College campus is a stunning place in a very rural community, about two hours from San Francisco. The main part of the campus was built 30 years ago and, until recently, had seen relatively few changes. Most of the buildings are made of wood, stone, and concrete. At the heart of the campus is a small lake. The campus has dense areas of trees, but very little groundcover. Their clients, a team of three amazing early childhood educators and a gifted campus administrator, had collectively nurtured and refined their vision for more than 10 years to create a child-centered place of learning for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. It is important for key people to be at the table when big decisions are made. This is just as true if one is working at a large college, or providing care in a home environment. On the Columbia College Project the authors benefited greatly from one of their key stakeholders. Their clients were quite clear that their goal was to create a comfortable space from the children's point of view and scale, not the adults'. Between the site characteristics and their client's goals it became clear that they needed to break one large building into five pieces, each of which was between 2,500 and 3,500 square feet, about the size of a large house. Thus, the idea of creating a Children's Village emerged. The author discusses how the Children's Village was created.