● A Day In The Dell Designed As Serious Fun
In the Lilac Dell is an adult project inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach which originated more than 30 years ago in a small town of the same name in northern Italy. The approach encourages children in day care centres to express their feelings and ideas through art.
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● The Whitney Young Center Uses The Reggio Emilia Method
Classical music can be heard in the background. Water trickles from a small fountain in the softly lighted, Art Deco-style Discovery Room as a 5-year-old builds a small, intricate city from wooden blocks.
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● Reggio Emilia : A New Way Of Seeing Children
In beautiful, light-filled rooms, babies nap in floor-level "nests" so they can crawl out and explore when they awaken. In preschools, 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds spend weeks on projects, generating artwork and analytical thinking that stun Americans with their sophistication.
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● New Charter School Touts Diversity
When students at Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center speak, teachers listen. And they record. And they write. And they post on a bulletin board what the children have written and researched their words.
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● Absolutely The Most Exciting Thing
At The Clayton Schools' Family Center, a group of toddlers, fascinated by two hermit crabs that inhabited a terrarium in the classroom, were encouraged by their teachers to study them more closely.
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● All The World's A School
Many local parents, it seems, see kindergarten in two lights. Some merely expect it to be a decent daycare centre where they can leave their children while they work. Others take the opposite view, demanding that kindergartens tutor their children in reading and writing so they can beat other youngsters into big-name schools. To others, kindergarten is a combination of the two.
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● An Artist Among Young Artists
Bill did not want to direct the children's action. Rather, he wanted to help them view the world with the eye of an artist. Charlie's father, Bill, is an artist-a professional sculptor and a designer. When Charlie's parents came for kindergarten registration, Bill asked if he could work with different groups of children in the school each week. Everyone was delighted to have him join our staff at The Children's School.
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● An Italian Import For Early Education
What would preschoolers do if they suddenly found a plump, purple eggplant on the table? The staff at the Model Early Learning Center (MELC) in Washington, D.C., hoped they would dive for their crayons. Instead, the children barely glanced at the eggplant....So the staff changed tack. Before school opened, they filled a bowl with lemons and hung three more from the ceiling.
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● Cheese, Children & Container Cranes : Learning From Reggio Emilia
That morning, an assistant of the mayor had picked the spouses up to take them to the Diana nursery school, once declared by Newsweek magazine to be the "most innovative preschool in the world." The Americans did not know they were going to visit much more than a school; in fact, they were going to see the hub of a global network of unique educational institutions.
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● Creativity Prized In Reggio-Style Preschools
In the Italian educational philosophy, there are no set lessons. Instead, children's interests and talents guide the day's work. At tiny tables, in tiny chairs, the pupils do the talking at Stephen S. Wise Temple Nursery School and the teachers take the notes.
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● D.C. Preschool Takes Italian Approach To Education
The Model Early Learning Center in Washington, D.C., has used the Reggio Emilia approach to its curriculum for three years, emphasizing intense interaction between students, parents, and instructors.
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● Innovative Approach To Kindergarten
Kerrie Trebilcock first encountered the Reggio Emilia approach to teaching six years ago, and since then she has become one of its foremost advocates in Australia. She has been teaching young children for 14 years, but adapting her classroom style to the Reggio Emilia philosophy revolutionised her career, she says.
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● Italian Art Of Kindergarten Study
Italy has been a source of fashion, furniture and fine food in Hong Kong for many years. Now, Italian inspiration is being sought on a far more fundamental matter: education. The northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia has pioneered a pre-school system that is exciting educators around the world. The child-centred approach, in which there are no right answers and children are encouraged to explore and reach their own conclusions, is about as far as one can get from a traditional Hong Kong kindergarten.
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● Italian Connection
Education theories come and go, but one has gripped imaginations worldwide, writes Wendy Bowler. "We're not doing Reggio here, we're just trying to draw inspiration from it." This is the typical response of a growing community of Victorian teachers who are starting to apply new ideas on early education developed in Reggio Emilia, in northern Italy.
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● Children-Chosen Curriculum
Once the tablecloth is smoothed over, ceramic bowls and cups are lined up, flanked by gleaming silverware. The lights are dimmed, the chili is steaming, the salad is crisp. The diners take their seats. "Can I have some of that?" one asks, and is politely handed a dish of croutons.
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● Learning How To Learn : The Arts As Core In An Emergent Curriculum
The arts mean different things to different people. While many of us enjoy and appreciate artistic experiences, we often find it difficult to explain exactly what we have come to know or understand as a result of our artistic encounters.
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● Listen To The Children
A few weeks back, the meadow behind Sabot School glowed with buttercups, which, not surprisingly, caught the attention of children enrolled in the private preschool. What are buttercups? Where do they come from? What can we do with them? As the children surveyed the sea of gold, they wanted to know.
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● Putting Children First
Getting a jump-start on their 18-month-old daughter's education, Justine and Ray Gastrow already have selected a junior kindergarten with a unique, freewheeling instructional approach that is taking root in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the country. That's why the Gastrows and others like them are signing their kids up, and often plunking $5,500 to $8,000 a year down, for early childhood education programs modeled after the world-celebrated preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy.
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● Reggio Emilia Lights Up Education
Reggio Emilia is the hot spot of early childhood education. Originating in Italy, it's unlike Montessori because it is open- ended and has many splendid outcomes. In a nutshell, Reggio returns the basic, loving, interested home environment to institutional day care, and that's good.
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● Preschoolers Are Given Freedom To Explore
Art teacher Chuck Schwall issued a challenge recently to three boys in a pre-kindergarten class at The St. Michael School on the eastern edge of Clayton: Turn a classmate's squiggly line drawing into a wire sculpture that might hang from the ceiling. John Paul Austin, Brian Barrett and Sam Carey, all 5 years old, looked at each other. They looked at the ceiling. They spread their hands to show how big they wanted the project. They talked about where to begin. They reached for wire.
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● An Inspiration For Inclusion Of Children With Special Rights
The Reggio Approach to early childhood education has become a topic of much interest to teachers desiring a more constructivist classroom for brain based learning. Many researchers have written reports of effective teaching in the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. However, few have addressed the manner in which the needs of children with "special rights" or children in special education have been met. This paper describes the Reggio Community, the Reggio Approach, and full inclusion of children with special rights.
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● Painting A Tragedy
A very insightful article by Toni Gross and Sydney Gurewitz Clemens which illustrates the application of Reggio principles in helping children come to grips with the aftermath of the terrorists' attack on New York city on September 11, 2001.
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