Documenting and displaying the children’s project work, which is necessary for children to express, revisit, and construct and reconstruct their feelings, ideas and understandings.

Similar to the portfolio approach, documentation of children’s work in progress is viewed as an important tool in the learning process for children, teachers, and parents.

Pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what they are doing, feeling and thinking, and the children’s interpretation of experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation of the dynamics of learning.

Teachers act as recorders (documenters) for the children, helping them trace and revisit their words and actions and thereby making the learning visible.

By Andrew Loh, Dec 2006

Supporting and enriching children’s learning through in-depth, short-term (one week) and long-term (throughout the school year) project work, in which responding, recording, playing, exploring, hypothesis building and testing, and provoking occurs.

Projects are child-centered, following their interest, returning again and again to add new insights.

Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic.

By Andrew Loh, Dec 2006

The teacher’s role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children.

Within such a teacher-researcher role, educators carefully listen, observe, and document children’s work and the growth of community in their classroom and are to provoke and stimulate thinking

Teachers are committed to reflection about their own teaching and learning.

Classroom teachers working in pairs and collaboration, sharing information and mentoring between personnel.

By Andrew Loh, Dec 2006

In the Reggio Approach, children, teachers, parents and community are interactive and work together. This helps to build a community of inquiry between adults and children, for communication and interaction can deepen children’s inquiry and theory building about the world around them.

Programs in Reggio are family centered. Loris’s vision of an “education based on relationships” focuses on each child in relation to others and seeks to activate and support children’s reciprocal relationships with other children, family, teachers, society, and the environment.

By Andrew Loh, Dec 2006

Are you looking for a preschool for your little one? Make sure you visit Abigail Adams Preschool. Our program is engaging, enriching and fun. We spend our days teaching kids by doing.

Our open houses are designed to give parents and children an understanding of the environment, curriculum, and community at Abigail Adams Preschool.

There will be activities to engage your child and knowledgeable people to answer your questions.

Join us tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30th to tour Abigail Adams Preschool and learn about our Summer Experience program and Admissions for the Fall 2013-2014 school year. We enroll children as young as 2.9 and no potty training is required. RSVP here.

Hailed as the best pre-schools in the world by Newsweek magazine in 1991, the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education has attracted the worldwide attention of educators, researchers and just about anyone interested in early childhood education best practices. Even the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)’s revised version of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) guidelines also included examples from Reggio approach. Today, Reggio approach has been adopted in USA, UK, New Zealand, Australia and many other countries.

Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) founded the ‘Reggio Emilia’ approach at a city in northern Italy called Reggio Emilia. The ‘Reggio’ approach was developed for municipal child-care and education programs serving children below six. The approach requires children to be seen as competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, inventive and possess a desire to interact and communicate with others.

The ‘Reggio’ vision of the child as a competent learner has produced a strong child-directed curriculum model. The curriculum has purposive progression but not scope and sequence. Teachers follow the children’s interests and do not provide focused instruction in reading and writing. Reggio approach has a strong belief that children learn through interaction with others, including parents, staff and peers in a friendly learning environment.

By Andrew Loh, Dec 2006

This poem, by the founder of the Reggio-Emilia Approach, beautifully conveys the importance imagination and discovery play in early childhood learning. Much of the philosophy is based on protecting young children from institutionalized doctrines which often make learning a chore instead of a natural curiosity.

The Hundred Languages of Children

The child is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.

A hundred.

Always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.

The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.

They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.

They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.

-Loris Malaguzzi
Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach

If your child is between the ages of 3 and 6 and attends a child care center, preschool, or kindergarten program, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) suggests you look for these 10 signs to make sure your child is in a good classroom.

1. Children spend most of their playing and working with materials or other children. They do not wander aimlessly, and they are not expected to sit quietly for long periods of time.

2. Children have access to various activities throughout the day. Look for assorted building blocks and other construction materials, props for pretend play, picture books, paints and other art materials, and table toys such as matching games, pegboards, and puzzles. Children should not all be doing the same thing at the same time.

3. Teachers work with individual children, small groups, and the whole group at different times during the day. They do not spend all their time with the whole group.

4. The classroom is decorated with children’s original artwork, their own writing with invented spelling, and stories dictated by children to teachers.

5. Children learn numbers and the alphabet in the context of their everyday experiences. The natural world of plants and animals and meaningful activities like cooking, taking attendance, or serving snack provide the basis for learning activities.

6. Children work on projects and have long periods of time (at least one hour) to play and explore. Worksheets are used little if at all.

7. Children have an opportunity to play outside every day. Outdoor play is never sacrificed for more instructional time.

8. Teachers read books to children individually or in small groups throughout the day, not just at group story time.

9. Curriculum is adapted for those who are ahead as well as those who need additional help. Teachers recognize that children’s different background and experiences mean that they do not learn the same things at the same time in the same way.

10. Children and their parents look forward to school. Parents feel secure about sending their child to the program. Children are happy to attend; they do not cry regularly or complain of feeling sick.

Copyright © 1996 by National Association for the Education of Young Children. Reproduction of this material is freely granted, provided credit is given to the National Association for the Education of Young Children.