Body Island or body outline

Reggio Emilia approach:

 The Reggio Emilia Approach® is an educational philosophy based on the image of a child with strong potentialities for development and a subject with rights, who learns through the hundred languages belonging to all human beings, and grows in relations with others.

The Reggio Emilia Approach is founded on:

  • collegial and relations-based work for all workers
  • the daily presence of a plurality of educators and teachers with children
  • the atelier and the person of the atelierista
  • in-school kitchens
  • the environment as educator
  • documentation for making creative knowledge processes visible
  • the pedagogical and educational practice co-ordinating group
  • the participation of families

Values
“To make a lovable school, industrious, inventive, liveable, documentable and communicable, a place of research, learning, re-cognition and reflection, where children, teachers and families feel well - is our point of arrival.” 
Loris Malaguzzi

The hundred languages

Children as human beings possess a hundred languages: a hundred ways of thinking, expressing, understanding, of encountering otherness through a way of thinking that weaves together and does not separate the various dimensions of experience. The hundred languages are a metaphor for the extraordinary potentials of children, their knowledge-building and creative processes, the myriad forms with which life is manifested and knowledge is constructed.

It is the responsibility of the infant-toddler centre and the preschool to valorise all verbal and non-verbal languages with equal dignity

https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/

















Student observations 

Activities

  • playing music - they played with instruments and lights scattered in bowls and used different shapes and noises in their play 
  • making shadows against the wall
  • clay work
  • dress-up
  • preparing and setting the table for dinner
  • circle time
  • talking through the pipes
  • children used a lot of sensory items to play with 

  • football

  • Running 

  • Serving and setting a table.

  • building a tower.

  • counting 

  • watering plants

  • reading 

Views on setting

  • it is very spacious and has different rooms for different things.
  • low windows so that the children can look outside and see what's going on.
  • low-level shelving, this allows the children to get materials themselves and by doing that they will become independent children.
  • Children were able to see all around the room and look at other children outside
  • Freedom: they were let play whatever activities they wished 
  • The children discussed the activities they were doing and worked together 

  • The days are planned. This means there is something to do and the children are always involved in some sort of activity or learning. 

  • Children are encouraged to take on small roles and tasks that can also apply in the home setting an example of this would be cleaning up toys when there finished and setting the table for mealtime

  •  Parents are encouraged to get involved so that they have an active role in their child’s learning and feel valued. 

  • Children are encouraged to take on small roles and tasks that they can also apply in the home setting which can help to promote confidence in the young child

  • Days are planned out ahead so that children always have something to do and are always involved in some sort of activity/learning that they get to choose themselves

Websites: 

https://naturalplayandlearning.co.uk/natural-play-learning/reggio-emilia-a-new-perspective-on-young-childrens-learning/

https://www.earlychildhoodireland.ie/blog/reggio-emilia-quality-never-grows-old/