Preschool for a better world: Reggio Emilia approach

Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994)

The Reggio Emilia approach is nowadays in Sweden a big inspiration and main topic in several courses at Stockholm university.

There´s plenty of areas of the swedish curriculum´s that invites for this approach. Some teachers and practitioners travel to the region in north Italy to see, learn and be inspired there!

Loris Malaguzzi´s 3 children

Doing Reggio? en artikel av Margie Carter

Quick facts about Reggio Emilia:

Children are active protagonists in their growth and development processes
The hundred languages
Participation
Lystening
Learning as a process of individual and group construction
Educational research
Educational documentation
Progettazione
Organization
Environment, spaces and relations
Professional development
Assesment

Indications Preschools and Infant-Toddler Centres of Municipality of reggio Emilia (2010)

www.scoulenidi.re.it

The cornerstone of the Reggio philosophy is an image of the child as competent, strong, inventive and full of potential- a subject with rights instead of needs. Reggio educators´respect toward children and adults is evident in the following aspects of their educational philosophy:

Participation
Ongoing professional and staff development
Collegiality
School environment
The atelier
Family and community involvement
Documentation, research, study and experimentation
Social constructivism

http://www.innovativeteacherproject.org/reggio/index.php

You can learn more about Reggio Emilia´s values here:

Innovative teacher project

There are several preschools in Sweden working with the Reggio Emilia approach. I visited three of them to find inspiration in the way they organize their rooms to offer kids opportunities to research and experiment and the way they document children´s learning process.

I summarize my understanding of what the Reggio Emilia approach in base of what I read and saw under my visits to Reggio Emilia inspired preschools in Sweden:

According to the preschool´s principal, Kids har rights to aesthetics! Teachers organize their rooms to offer kids something beautiful to explore, to look at, to experience...

Every room offers different corners to play with and the kids can freely move from corner to corner. In small or bigger groups, there´s place for everyone!

The Reggio Emilia approach sees the group as a way to learn and inspire each other: kids, parents, teachers and the community aswell. It is the kids´ interests that lead the projects they work with, together with teachers they decide which way to follow. A "rhizome" that tangles everywhere and follow different ways. Like spaguettis!

The Reggio Emilia approach focuses more on the process than the results, it´s the way there and no the destination that counts!

The Reggio approach doesn´t see the kids as they "are" something: quiet, shy, outgoing etc. Instead believes that kids become, they react to the environment and stimuli they receive, in combination with the interaction with other kids and adults.

The rooms are considered as an "extra teacher" if those are inspiring for the kids. They believe that every room invite you to something; to run to build, to be quiet or to explore...

Those rooms are never ready. They follow and grow with the children, and thanks to the documentation of kids learning processes and most important the reflection and analys of it, that they can search, develope and offer new challenges.

"We create the room and the room create oss"

I love the way their rooms invite kids to touch, to play, to experience TO LEARN! A side benefit is that those rooms are created with so little money.

This video shows scandinavian teachers visiting Reggio Emilia and getting inspiration for their preschools (available until november 2013):

Reggio Emilia UR Play

In all three visits I found clay, water, sand, light, color among with different materials (from the nature or recicled) to build and create. Open rooms with so many exciting corners to experience!

My first visit to a Reggio Emilia inspired preschool in Danderyd Stockholm opened my mind to new ways to see a room! My colleagues and I visited this preschool on the evening to not interfere with ther routines and disturbe the children.

We were free to make all the pictures we wanted!

delta sand

"home corner"

costume time?

short tables to explore with water and other material

building corner with lots of blocks

the Atelje

toddler´s room

play and explore textures!

Here are some of the pictures from my visits to preschools in Solna Stockholm:

Crafts and documentation, where all the learning processes follow the kids interests, questions and ideas...

Sand indoors, this special sand called "delta sand" offers the possibility to build and play thanks to the special consistence of it (if you press it feels lika clay almost).