EDUCATION
For example, children in Kirstin
McAuley’s kindergarten began the year by exploring the campus. While walking in the wetlands behind SPARC, they found some cracks in the ground. They wondered, “What’s down there?” It was an electric moment when they were all drawn together, and Kirstin helped them follow that interest. “They wondered about what’s
underneath the ground and what would happen if the earth cracked open,” Kirstin said. “They returned to class and used paint and clay and pen on large paper to shape and communicate their theories about what lies beneath. They debated the earth’s place in the universe, and they hypothesized about animal skeletons and treasure beneath the soil. They named the cracks Mother Earth and Baby Earth, characters who still appear weeks later in their stories. We see reverberations of that moment on the trail even today as they continue to build with soil and mud on the playground. From those small moments you bring in bigger ideas.”
A tenet of the Reggio Emilia
approach is to allow students to work with their ideas through art. The art studio is so important that it occupies a central location—in the Beginning School it is in the hallway—and an art teacher, Laura Foster-Flynn, is always there to help children express and explore their ideas. “Observational drawing teaches the
kids how to see,” Laura said. “We do explorations of line and color and
working in the landscape—we took the big drawing boards and paper outside. Some days it was blustery and that affected what they painted. It is a very lively, changing curriculum. Every class builds on the last.” Because students are pursuing a
personal interest, they are very invested in what they are doing in the art studio. It’s more about the process of creating and exploring than about making a finished piece of art. They also explore their ideas through play. For example, another kindergarten class is investigating houses, and some of the students build houses with blocks. A class that is investigating slugs has built slug homes with sticks, moss, and mud. The pre-kindergartners were intrigued by an empty hive they found, and they made their own hive from paper. Students also are
learning to read and write in order to communicate their ideas. An important part of the day is story
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