This paper explores the relationship between the design of active learning places for children and intelligent environments. With focus on active learning in the digital age, it articulates various spatial relations in children's interactions with the environment. The exploration is through a proposed theoretical framework where space overarches digital tools and plays the key part in the shift to the intelligent environments of the learner-centered educational paradigm. Assuming that children generally build and share their knowledge through spatial experience, we group spatial definitions of active learning into five categories that are also schemas for physical experience. Spatial diagrams for each category are presented to guide the design bases of open-ended learning environments for children.