A Reggio Emilia Approach

'Child led investigations, open free spaces to play, a deep connection with nature and an emphasis on exploring and creating.' 

'Children are ...detectives, gifted with the capacity to utilise clues, to hypothesise "missing" explanations and to reconstruct facts. From the very beginning, their curiosity in learning refuses simple and isolated things. Instead, children love to find the dimensions and relations of complex situations ...create analogies, metaphors, anthropomorphic meanings, and logical meanings.' (Bringing Reggio Emilia Home 1997)

What is Reggio Emilia? 

Reggio Emilia is a town in Italy. Loris Malaguzzi and parents in the villages around Reggio Emilia developed an educational philosophy following the need for a new way of learning. They believed that children form their own personality during early years of development and that they are given 'a hundred languages' meaning they have many ways of expressing themselves. The Reggio approach sees children as strong and capable. In a Reggio appraoch the educator is seen as three things. The teacher, the child and the environment. 

Here is a link to a lovely little video which explains it really simply! 

https://youtu.be/cvwpLarbUD8