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Letter posted in the Reggio List Serv by Carolyn Steinhoff Smith What is The New Literacy? by Susan Rich Sheridan What Does Research Say About Early Childhood Education? by S. Bredekamp, R.A. Knuth, L.G. Kunesh, and D.D. Shulman The Reggio Inspired Approach, by Dr. Rebecca Isbell What Parents Can Do To Promote Sensory Integration In Their Child The Contribution of Documentation to the Quality of Early Childhood Education by Lilian G. Katz and Sylvia C. Chard Encouraging Creativity by Evelyn Petersen /Parent Talk The Reggio Emilia Approach (Fragment) by Amy Sussna Klein, Ed.D.

NOW ACCEPTING REGISTRATIONS FOR 2011-2012 Shelton Academy K - 5

Letter posted in the Reggio List Serv by Carolyn Steinhoff Smith Dear friends, Having come home from the study tour in Reggio Emilia, now I’m reflecting on what to do about how being there changes me. One thing I want to do about it is to write to thank all of you who work with Reggio Children, for your generous hospitality. How rare it is that the values people espouse are one in the same as those they embody in what they do. In your loving words, your sensitive scheduling of breaks, in the many snacks and the marvelous dinner and documentation you provided, in the profound and powerful talks and videos and slides, in the opportunities you built in for discussion, you taught us about the culture of your communities. I send gratitude also to all the members of the schools’ community, parents, teachers and children, for their openness to allowing 175 of us to become so much of their focus for a week, for altering the flow of their days to let us be a part of them, for welcoming us so warmly. I also want to write to all of you in the U.S. who are inspired by the schools in Reggio. I hope this letter will be a ping-pong ball I serve, that you will return in the form of your reflections. I conclude the study tour with the conviction that we are deluded if we imagine we will simply be able to do here in America what they do there. What we can do is let the culture of the Italian Reggio schools community provoke us to reflect critically on ourselves and our practice. Witnessing their relationships gives us a perspective that is vital to our ability to reflect more deeply on the nature of our relationships, with one another and with the world. “If you learn about love when you’re little, then when you’re a grown up it’s easier,” said a child of the Diana school. In our schools we do not learn about love. We learn about proving ourselves, we learn about evaluation, measuring and not measuring up, we learn about fulfilling our duty –but not about love. “The Empire does not require that its servants love each other, only that they do their duty,” writes J.M. Coetzee in his astonishing novel Waiting for the Barbarians. The relationships expressed everywhere in the schools in Reggio, between adults and children, in their ways of relating to one another, in the documentation of their work together, are loving. They are, therefore, tragically, not possible for us to replicate –at least without pain. If we are to alter the relationships that constitute our communities so they become trusting and mutual and participatory, so they teach us about love, we must confront two aspects of our own cultural group dynamics. One is our own internalized judgments, and the other is the judgments others make of us when we stop relating to human beings, including children, with suspicion. I write of my own experience in this regard not just as an individual, but also in the belief that “the personal is political,” that culture shapes us, and so awareness and description of individuals’ thoughts and actions provide access to deeper understanding of our culture. Adding to the research I’m doing about the schools of Reggio Emilia, witnessing the communities firsthand makes me more acutely aware of how cultural dynamics express themselves in my relationships with children and students, as a parent and as a teacher. It leads me to continue to relax my grip on the suspiciousness to which I cling. I understand in deeper ways my memories of being a mother when my daughters, now teenagers, were young. I remember fighting with myself to resist the feeling that I should be “controlling” them. In public I felt the silent judgment of people around me, if my children cried, or jumped or ran too vigorously or were too loud. At home, when they would defy me, or assert their will, the judgment was a voice in my own mind saying, “What kind of mother are you? You can’t even control your own children!” When this thinking held sway, I reprimanded or imposed myself on my children. To avoid this, I had to tell myself that controlling them was not my aim, that I would not let others’ misguided judgments determine my relationship with my children. It was an internal struggle, the struggle of every parent in America. Being in Reggio, with Amelia Gambetti, Carlina Rinaldi and the other study tour organizers, and in the schools, I understand more clearly how this absolute, harsh, imagined power, through oneself, to children, is the psychology of hierarchical culture –our culture. The community of Reggio makes visible for us a mesh, a lacework, of relationships that are mutual and collaborative, a horizontal root system of support, care and love in which such judgments do not occur. The study tour leads me to understand in deeper ways my evolution as a teacher, the pressure I felt in almost every situation, in every classroom, to “manage” and “control” children, to impose curricula rather than to listen to and participate in research with them. I understand the America fear that is sometimes my fear, the power of belief in the illusory polarity between chaos and control. We are suspicious of children because we believe that if we do not control them, our classrooms and our schools, indeed our society, will fall into chaos. My brother, a liberal reformer, a finalist for “Teacher of the Year,” when I described to him the philosophy of the Reggio schools, said, “But, if you don’t control your classroom, it will be ‘Lord of the Flies’”. These images, of the savage child, the child with behavior disorders, are deeply imbedded in the consciousness of our culture. They come from educational reformers like Horace Mann and John Dewey, from Piaget and Vygotsky. They come from Darwin’s “survival of the fittest,” modeled (according to Stephen Jay Gould) on the capitalist economic philosophy of his good friend and colleague Adam Smith. They come from Puritanism, from dualistic Christianity forged in one of the greatest earlier empires, ancient Rome. Being in Reggio Emilia, for a moment we become participants in communities where these images do not hold sway. We are moved, astonished and baffled. In these communities, there is no hierarchy of power. There is no director. There is no higher and lower level thinking. Logic is not better than or separated from imagination. We cannot comprehend it. But we feel it. Being with them frees us. The openness and love and warmth of the schools’ culture, the beauty, the aliveness, the depth moves us and draws us in –and we are also intimidated by it. Many say, “I’m overwhelmed. I feel so inadequate. This is so beautiful, I could never do this. I feel like a terrible teacher.” We are threatened. How do we let go of our image of the child, our terror of the Other, of conflict, as the bringer of chaos? I believe that, on some level, we also intuitively know that such relationships-mutual, horizontal, collaborative –are unacceptable in America. They are radical. They are a political challenge to the structures of power that we internalize. Our propensity is to separate what happens inside the schools in Reggio from the world in which the schools exist, the political world of impending war, of encroaching repression. This need, to isolate education from its context, is, I submit, an internalization of the dominant/subordinate structure of power. The communities of Reggio Emilia do not make this separation. “Children have to know things; it is better to know about things than things happening without knowing them, for example: war, death,” said a child of the Diana school. If we relate in mutual ways with children, with those our culture deems the bringers of chaos, many will designate us as bringers of chaos as well. They will punish us. Perhaps we recognize we are safer if we cling to a sense of overwhelming despair that collaborative relationships are impossible in the U.S., than we are if we undertake the subversive work of forging them in the face of the hostility such efforts evoke. I invite you to reflect on the possibility that the propensity of some participants to cut off discussion if it goes on too long, and to criticize the speaker and the form of people’s statements, but not engage with the content, are expressions of this fear. The effect of acting out of this fear of conflict is the perpetuation of an anti-democratic, hierarchically controlling culture. The list can be a potent forum where the kind of discussion that can lead to real shifts in culture can, and does, occur. I submit that we should take advantage of this, not cut it off. Remember that townspeople created the preschools in Reggio explicitly as a political response of resistance to fascism. Their efforts began out of conflict, as a courageous but fragile response against a brutally repressive culture that had become all-encompassing. The schools continue to be under attack from these same powers today. We learned on the study tour that Italian president Berlusconi is looking to the Bush administration’s school reforms as a model for reforms of Italian education which threaten the ability of the preschools to carry on their work. We are not the only ones who face obstacles. If we do not understand our work in a political context, we only support the status quo, which will not tolerate the new kinds of relationships the Reggio preschools embody. But this set of realities –our national history, the history of our education system as the cauldron in which hierarchical, dualistic culture is cooked, and from which we all eat, our own internalized resistance, the punishing ostracism we endure if we teach and live differently- these realities are what make it impossible for us to replicate, to “implement,” the kinds of relationships people are living out in the preschools in Reggio. Instead, we can use our reactions to being there as “diagnostic indicators.” Our attraction, our falling in love, our tears, our smiles and laughter and enjoyment, our feelings of helplessness and despair, our resentment, all these reactions are openings. They provide us with information about our culture. In Carlina’s powerful talk about the normality of research as a way of life, she said we must not downplay the importance of children’s asking “Why?” Being with children teaches us “the pleasure of being amazed, of marveling, of doubt, of crisis, of WHY.” Let us ask ourselves, Why do I feel despair? Because it seems impossible to ever have schools like this in the U.S. Why is impossible? Because of government’s regulations. Because of parent’s lack of understanding. The community culture we witness in Reggio holds responses to these obstacles. They are not simple, expedient technical solutions. They are not solutions at all. But they are provocations to research. They are openings to engage in study and discussion with one another in our differences. What do government regulations mean? Why are they constructed as they are? What kind of values do they embody? What do we think of these values? What does our nation promote these values? How does our culture reproduce and perpetuate these values? How do we? Why do parents question us when we change our ways of relating with their children? What kind of relationships do we have with parents? Why are they the way they are? What values do my relationships with parents embody? What do I think of these values? How can I alter the nature of the relationships I have, may community has, with parents? How do community relationships in Reggio preschools inform our understanding of our own relationships? These are examples of the endless provocations our relationships with educators in Reggio Emilia can provide for us. It may be possible, some day, after much deep reflection over a long period of time, much discussion, research, agonizing, anger and pain and exhilaration and joy, to actually alter our schools at their roots so they are more like the ones in Reggio. But altered schools are not more important than the research and reflection about ourselves and our culture in which our relationships with Italian Reggio educators invite us to engage. March 11th , 2003

What is The New Literacy? by Susan Rich Sheridan The New Literacy is the ability to read and write images as well as text. Think about television commercials; until the name of the advertiser flashes on the screen, the barrage of images, although visually engaging, may have been incomprehensible. The New Literacy is as old as paleolithic wall paintings and Egyptian hierglyphics and as new as computer page-makers. Because they model brain processes, combined visual/verbal educational strategies allow learners to optimize their thinking skills while training students for success in a technological society. The benefit of connecting, for instance, drawing with writing, is allowing the child to return to the natural, Vygotskian continuum in which play, speech, drawing and writing are integral parts of a lifelong process. The ability to work with information visually and verbally in a variety of densely integrated, visuo/spatial/ linguistic ways is The New Literacy. The New Literacy includes skills associated with mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, and, pre-eminently, with technological intelligence. The two hemispheres are connected. Each hemisphere depends upon the other. It is at the very intersection of visual and verbal representations - where image and text collide - that heightened meaning occurs. The New Literacy helps all teachers - English teachers, art teachers, regular ed., special ed., ESL, mathematics and science and technology teachers - as it helps parents - to develop skills in their students, in their children, and in themselves beyond specific content areas. Drawing/Writing allows teachers to become more alike than they are different, encouraging mutual understanding, appreciation, and collaboration. Drawing/Writing teachers are able to foster a range of cognitive and emotional skills in their students through one simple, repeated system of delivery: Drawing/Writing. In this way, teachers address the whole brain of every child. In addition, teachers are free to design their own cross-modal strategies, in which drawing and writing continue to provide their inestimable benefits to the human brain. A new theory of multiple literacies copyright 2000 Susan Rich Sheridan What makes us different as humans from other language-using creatures is not multiple intelligences as much as multiple literacies. We are the only creatures who make marks of significance. These strings of marks can be defined as literacies. These literacies - drawing, writing, musical notation, mathematical notation - give our brains new objects to work with. Our brains oscillate; there is an ebb and flow of neural activity, like tides. Our brains are designed to work in a back and forth manner between modes of representation, or literacies, using first one, then another, using first one, than another to extend that other. For instance, we can draw and then write about our drawings, learning ever more precisely what it is we are thinking as well as what we are capable of thinking. This nonlinear quality of human thought where the output is different from the input - sometimes dramatically so - characterizes human thought along with other dynamic systems like cloud formation and population growth. We start as children by drawing. No one teaches us how. We are drawing the shapes of our thoughts. We are also organizing our brains through intentional action. Our literacies are multiple and varied Interdependent and equivalent or analogous or......related and necessary. No one system is powerful enough to explain everything. We need to be able to draw, write, compute, predict, speculate about our ideas. A scientific explanation is just that: scientific. The same is true about an artistic explanation: it is just that. The same is true with mathematics. But put them all together, or put several of them together...........and we start to get somewhere! EO Wilson in his book Consilience makes an argument for the coming together not only of the sciences but of the arts and humanities. One way this consilience, this “leaping together” can be achieved is by placing mark-making at the heart of our human mental endeavors realizing that these marks are at first equipotential: The marks we make as little children can turn into drawings or writing or numbers or algebra or graphs or musical notation, or calculus or architectural plans. One further point: If we can talk about our drawings when we are little children, we are reading. Reading, drawing, talking, writing, mathematics, music are interrelated systems of explanation. Educationally, these multiple literacies can flow into and out of each other if we start with little children’s mark-making, honoring that astonishing starting point. Susan Rich Sheridan

What Does Research Say About Early Childhood Education? by S. Bredekamp, R.A. Knuth, L.G. Kunesh, and D.D. Shulman Early Childhood Education (ECE) is the term frequently applied to the education of young children from birth through age 8. Although early childhood education has existed since the creation of kindergarten in the 1800s, the last decade has seen a tremendous amount of attention devoted to the subject of early education for young children. The first national goal focuses directly on the early childhood years: "By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn." We believe that from the time of birth, all children are ready to learn. However, what we do or don't do as individuals, educators, and collectively as society can impede a child's success in learning. For example, if we do not provide adequate health care and nutrition for our youngsters, those children entering the public schools will already be behind their healthier, properly fed peers. The current educational practices of testing children for kindergarten entry and placement, raising the entrance age to kindergarten, adding an extra "transitional" year between kindergarten and first grade, and retaining children in preschool, kindergarten, or first grade are attempts to obtain an older, more capable cohort of children at each grade level. These educational strategies suggest that current curriculum expectations do not match the developmental level of the children for whom the grade is intended. In effect, these strategies blame the victims, the children, rather than confronting the real problem--an inappropriate curriculum. The focus of this program, therefore, is to address curriculum and assessment issues related to the education of young children and discuss ways schools can change to become ready for children. Information that follows has been excerpted from position statements and guidelines developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS/SDE) for appropriately educating young children, ages 3 through 8. Click on this link to read the complete article in Internet: http://ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/stw_esys/5erly_ch.htm

What Parents Can Do To Promote Sensory Integration In Their Child (excerpts taken from A Parent's Guide to Understanding Sensory Integration a publication of: Sensory Integration International 1402 Cravens Avenue Torrance, CA 9050) "Probably the most important way a parent can facilitate sensory integration is by recognizing that it exists and that it plays an important role in the development of a child." Think of different ways a child experiences her/his environment. Try to foster ways the child can incorporate all of their senses as they explore and learn about the different things around them. Another important concept for all parents to understand is that "each child is an individual with unique interests, responses and needs." You can learn best about your child by watching her/him and their reaction to different situations. Observe how your child "is affected by touch, movement, sights, sounds, smells, or heights." Different situations will elicit different responses. Look for signs of excitement, fear, nervousness and change activities or situations based on your child's responses. Remember "that sensory integration is not the same as sensory stimulation." Just as important as providing a variety of stimulation, it may also be necessary to reduce stimuli as well. Responses vary from child to child and individual responses from each child may change from one day to the next, or even during different times of the day. Keeping all of the above points in mind, there are ways a parent can help promote normal sensory integration in their children. Vision and hearing are often a focus of parents for their infants. Physical contact is also very important, not just for the tactile contact, but also "to enhance the parent-child relationship." Parents should also consider a variety of positions for their newborn in which to play, sleep (side or back), cuddle and observe.

"The hands, face, and feet contain the greatest concentration of touch receptors and, therefore, these are the parts of the body best able to discriminate shape, size, texture, and temperature." Light touch can be irritating, and may elicit negative responses in children. Firm rubbing, stroking or even pressure is often more calming. Children often seek the types of sensory experiences their nervous systems need. As a child shows interest in various sensations, try to provide this type of stimuli in their normal play activities. Sometimes a child's need or want for sensory stimulation may be misinterpreted as a need for attention or as a means of manipulation. Remember the processes involved in sensory integration. Those children having difficulty with certain senses or activities may need to put extra effort into those actions. They may, for example, need to focus their full attention on balance or listening and be unable to process different input at the same time. "Sensory input can be a powerful force." Children may react by becoming excited or withdrawing from stimuli. "Sensation can have a dramatic effect on the nervous system." Sensory input can involve both active and passive involvement. When a child actively participates they must initiate, plan and execute movement. Passive activities may provide sensation, but not necessarily require a response. "Active involvement provides the best opportunity for changes in the brain that lead to growth, learning, and better organization of behavior. When a child is actively involved he/she has more control over the situation."

The Contribution of Documentation to the Quality of Early Childhood Education The municipal pre primary schools in the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia have been attracting worldwide attention for more than a decade. The reasons are many and have been discussed by a number of observers and visitors (see Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1993, and Katz & Cesarone, 1994.) While interest in what is now called the "Reggio Emilia Approach" is focused on many of its impressive features, perhaps its unique contribution to early childhood education is the use of the documentation of children's experience as a standard part of classroom practice. Documentation, in the forms of observation of children and extensive record keeping, has long been encouraged and practiced in many early childhood programs. However, compared to these practices in other traditions, documentation in Reggio Emilia focuses more intensively on children's experience, memories, thoughts, and ideas in the course of their work. Documentation practices in Reggio Emilia pre-primary schools provide inspiring examples of the importance of displaying children's work with great care and attention to both the content and aesthetic aspects of the display. Documentation typically includes samples of a child's work at several different stages of completion; photographs showing work in progress; comments written by the teacher or other adults working with the children; transcriptions of children's discussions, comments, and explanations of intentions about the activity; and comments made by parents. Observations, transcriptions of tape-recordings, and photographs of children discussing their work can be included. Examples of children's work and written reflections on the processes in which the children engaged can be displayed in classrooms or hallways. The documents reveal how the children planned, carried out, and completed the displayed work. It seems to us that high-quality documentation of children's work and ideas contributes to the quality of an early childhood program in at least six ways. 1. Enhancement of Children's Learning Documentation can contribute to the extensiveness and depth of children's learning from their projects and other work. As Loris Malaguzzi points out, through documentation children "become even more curious, interested, and confident as they contemplate the meaning of what they have achieved" (Malaguzzi, 1993, p. 63). The processes of preparing and displaying documentaries of the children's experience and effort provides a kind of debriefing or re-visiting of experience during which new understandings can be clarified, deepened, and strengthened. Observation of the children in Reggio Emilia pre-primary classes indicates that children also learn from and are stimulated by each other's work in ways made visible through the documents displayed. The documentation of the children's ideas, thoughts, feelings, and reports are also available to the children to record, preserve, and stimulate their memories of significant experiences, thereby further enhancing their learning related to the topics investigated. In addition, a display documenting the work of one child or of a group often encourages other children to become involved in a new topic and to adopt a representational technique they might use. For example, Susan and Leroy had just done a survey of which grocery stores in town are patronized by the families of their classmates. When Susan wanted to make a graph of her data, she asked Jeff about the graph displayed of his survey about the kinds of cereal their class ate for breakfast. With adult encouragement, children can be resourceful in seeking the advice of classmates when they know about the work done by the other children throughout the stages of a project. 2. Taking Children's Ideas and Work Seriously Careful and attractive documentary displays can convey to children that their efforts, intentions, and ideas are taken seriously. These displays are not intended primarily to serve decorative or show-off purposes. For example, an important element in the project approach is the preparation of documents for display by which one group of children can let others in the class working on other aspects of the topic learn of their experience and findings. Taking children's work seriously in this way encourages in them the disposition to approach their work responsibly, with energy and commitment, showing both delight and satisfaction in the processes and the results. 3. Teacher Planning and Evaluation with Children One of the most salient features of project work is continuous planning based on the evaluation of work as it progresses. As the children undertake complex individual or small group collaborative tasks over a period of several days or weeks, the teachers examine the work each day and discuss with the children their ideas and the possibilities of new options for the following days. Planning decisions can be made on the basis of what individual or groups of children have found interesting, stimulating, puzzling, or challenging. For example, in an early childhood center where the teachers engage weekly – and often daily as well – in review of children's work, they plan activities for the following week collaboratively, based in part on their review. Experiences and activities are not planned too far in advance, so that new strands of work can emerge and be documented. At the end of the morning or of the school day, when the children are no longer present, teachers can reflect on the work in progress and the discussion which surrounded it, and consider possible new directions the work might take and what suggestions might support the work. They can also become aware of the participation and development of each individual child. This awareness enables the teacher to optimize the children's chances of representing their ideas in interesting and satisfying ways. When teachers and children plan together with openness to each other's ideas, the activity is likely to be undertaken with greater interest and representational skill than if the child had planned alone, or the teacher had been unaware of the challenge facing the child. The documentation provides a kind of ongoing planning and evaluation that can be done by the team of adults who work with the children. 4. Parent Appreciation and Participation Documentation makes it possible for parents to become intimately and deeply aware of their children's experience in the school. As Malaguzzi points out, documentation "introduces parents to a quality of knowing that tangibly changes their expectations. They reexamine their assumptions about their parenting roles and their views about the experience their children are living, and take a new and more inquisitive approach toward the whole school experience" (Malaguzzi, 1993, p. 64). Parents' comments on children's work can also contribute to the value of documentation. Through learning about the work in which their children are engaged, parents may be able to contribute ideas for field experiences which the teachers may not have thought of, especially when parents can offer practical help in gaining access to a field site or relevant expert. In one classroom a parent brought in a turkey from her uncle's farm after she learned that the teacher was helping the children grasp what a real live turkey looked like. The opportunity to examine the documentation of a project in progress can also help parents to think of ways they might contribute their time and energy in their child's classroom. There are many ways parents can be involved: listening to children's intentions, helping them find the materials they need, making suggestions, helping children write their ideas, offering assistance in finding and reading books, and measuring or counting things in the context of the project. 5. Teacher Research and Process Awareness Documentation is an important kind of teacher research, sharpening and focusing teachers' attention on children's plans and understandings and on their own role in children's experiences. As teachers examine the children's work and prepare the documentation of it, their own understanding of children's development and insight into their learning is deepened in ways not likely to occur from inspecting test results. Documentation provides a basis for the modification and adjustment of teaching strategies, and a source of ideas for new strategies, while deepening teachers' awareness of each child's progress. On the basis of the rich data made available through documentation, teachers are able to make informed decisions about appropriate ways to support each child's development and learning. The final product of a child's hard work rarely makes possible an appreciation of the false starts and persistent efforts entailed in the work. By examining the documented steps taken by children during their investigations and representational work, teachers and parents can appreciate the uniqueness of each child's construction of his or her experience, and the ways group efforts contribute to their learning. 6. Children's Learning Made Visible Of particular relevance to American educators, documentation provides information about children's learning and progress that cannot be demonstrated by the formal standardized tests and checklists we commonly employ. While U.S. teachers often gain important information and insight from their own first-hand observations of children, documentation of the children's work in a wide variety of media provides compelling public evidence of the intellectual powers of young children that is not available in any other way that we know of. Conclusion The powerful contribution of documentation in these six ways is possible because children are engaged in absorbing, complex, interesting projects worthy of documentation. If, as is common in many traditional classrooms around the world, a large proportion of children's time is devoted to making the same pictures with the same materials about the same topic on the same day in the same way, there would be little to document which would intrigue parents and provide rich content for teacher-parent or child-parent discussion!

Encouraging Creativity Q. We are a family who appreciates all the arts, and we want our three and four year old to share our values. What kinds of things can we do with them to encourage their creativity? P. and M. Houston A. The pictures that hang in your home, the events you attend, the books you read and the music you play will all show your children that you value the arts. However, it is your attitude and the things you actually DO with your children that will really nurture their creativity. Creativity is not a product, although it often results in things we can hear, touch and see. Creativity is really a process of thinking and doing; it is a particular way of approaching life. Creative thinkers are divergent thinkers. They know there are many ways to solve a problem, not just one way. They know there may be many correct answers to a question, not just one answer. When they meet obstacles, creative thinkers work around them, making "lemons into lemonade". They enjoy experimenting with ideas and materials. Creativity is a life skill which will help your children as adults... on the job, working with others, and when they need stress relief or renewed energy. Here are some ways to encourage creativity:

Model creativity yourself; it is more caught than taught. You don't need to be an artist or performer. Just show your children that you enjoy trying new things. Play with clay, finger paint, try new recipes, make up silly songs or jokes, pretend, dance spontaneously with your kids in the living room, make up new endings to stories, and invent creations with blocks or recycled "junk". Display and praise their art and creations. This attention tells children you value what they invent and create. Use open ended materials. This gives children confidence in experimenting and completing their own creations. Use open questions, and "what if..." questions. This makes children think and encourages the use of their imaginations. For tips on creativity and 20 home made recipes for finger paint and modeling clays, send a self addressed stamped business envelope and $2 to Recipes, 207 Banks Station, Suite 689, Fayetteville, GA 30214. Evelyn Petersen is an Early Childhood Education consultant, KRTN Wire parenting columnist, and author. The following is from her parenting column. Evelyn Petersen is an early childhood consultant, the author of "A Practical Guide to Early Childhood Planning" and 5 other books for parents and teachers, including "Growing Creative Kids." She has been a weekly parenting columnist for the KRTN Wire service since l986, and is the national spokesperson for Hasbro's Family Game Night. Learn about the three early childhood education courses Evelyn is teaching on the internet on her web site www.askevelyn.com. You will also find news about early childhood courses on the internet, reviews of books and teacher resources, current teacher conferences, and an archive of teacher tips.

The Reggio Emilia Approach (Fragment) History Reggio Emilia is a small town of about 130,000 people in Northern Italy. In 1991, Newsweek magazine noted that the system of 33 infant/toddler schools and preschools in Reggio Emilia were among the ten best school systems in the world. Over the last 35 years, the teachers in the Reggio Emilia schools have taken the time to carry out a process of collaborative examination and analysis of teaching and learning about children. This examination and analysis has broadened constructivist theory, and the results have been demonstrated to experts in education. (As previously mentioned, “constructivist theory” refers to learning by doing and the development of knowledge and understanding based on the child’s own interests.) For example, in The Hundred Languages of Children (1998) Gardner recognizes how the Reggio approach beautifully connects important early childhood theory with practice. The Reggio Emilia approach will be covered in greater detail than the High/Scope approach and the Montessori method for a number of reasons. First, familiarity with the Reggio Emilia approach is integral to recent developments in early childhood theory and practice. The approach reflects on both constructivism and co-constructivism. Furthermore, adaptations of the Reggio Emilia approach have not been implemented as long as the other two program models in the United States. Thus, fewer people have actually had experience with Reggio. And finally, it’s a complex approach from a different culture. What Are the Reggio Emilia Approachs Main Components? Social

Cooperation and collaboration are terms that stress the value of revisiting social learning. First, children must become members of a community that is working together (cooperation). Once there is a foundation of trust between the children and adults, constructive conflict may be helpful in gaining new insights (collaboration). Co-construction refers to the fact that the meaning of an experience often is built in a social context. An atelierista is a teacher who has a special training that supports the curriculum development of the children and other faculty members. There is an atelierista in each of the Reggio Emilia preprimary schools. Pedagogistas are built in as part of the carefully planned support system of the Reggio Emilia schools. The word pedagogista is difficult to translate into English. They are educational consultants that strive to implement the philosophy of the system and advocate for seeing children as the competent and capable people they are. They also make critical connections between families, schools, and community. Curriculum One of the special features of the Reggio Emilia approach is called “documentation.” Documentation is a sophisticated approach to purposefully using the environment to explain the history of projects and the school community. It does not simply refer to the beautiful classroom artwork commonly found throughout schools following Reggio Emilia Approach. And, even though it often incorporates concrete examples of both the processes and products that are part of a child’s education, it is more than just that. It is a fundamental way of building connections. Documentation is discussed in more detail in the next section that describes the uniqueness of the Reggio Emilia Approach. Co-construction increases the level of knowledge being developed. This occurs when active learning happens in conjunction with working with others (e.g. having opportunities for work to be discussed, questioned, and explored). Having to explain ideas to someone else clarifies these ideas. In addition, conflicts and questions facilitate more connections and extensions. There is an opportunity to bring in different expertise. Thus, to facilitate co-construction, teachers need to “aggressively listen” and foster collaboration between all the members of the community whenever possible. Real learning takes place when they check, evaluate, and then possibly add to each other’s work. Long-term projects are studies that encompass the explorations of teachers and children. Flowcharts are an organized system of recording curriculum planning and assessment based on ongoing collaboration and careful review. Portfolios are a collection of a child’s work that demonstrates the child’s efforts, progress, and achievements over time. Environmental Set-Up. In Reggio Emilia, the environment is similar to that found in Montessori schools. However, the environmental set-up as a “third teacher” has been enhanced and extended in the Reggio Emilia approach. Like Montessori, it is believed beauty helps with concentration; the setting is aesthetically pleasing. Reggio Emilia schools create homelike environments. In Reggio, the homelike atmosphere is designed to help make children feel comfortable and learn practical life issues. Each child is provided a place to keep her own belongings. Documentation is a major part of the environmental set-up. Documentation illustrates both the process and the product. In documentation, the child is seen as an individual but also in relation to a group, with various possibilities for the individual. What Is Unique About the Reggio Emilia Approach? Reggio Emilia has become so popular in the early childhood field because it offers many unique curriculum ideas, because of the strong infrastructure for the Reggio schools, and because of the attention to co-construction. In terms of curriculum, the length and depth of projects is unique in the Reggio Emilia Approach. According to Amelia Gambetti’s presentation for the University of Missouri in Kansas City (April 15, 1993), three weeks is a relatively short project in the Reggio Emilia schools. Using the environment as a third teacher is stressed in the Reggio Emilia Schools. Documentation helps facilitate the environment as a teacher. There are numerous connections to which documentation is integral. Three major connections are: 1. The connection between the many audiences (e.g., parents, children, administrators, community, and staff personnel) and the experience 2. The connection between the work itself and the producers (e.g., by revisiting a project at a later time or by redoing a project using a different medium) 3. The connection between theory and practice. Flowcharts enhance the Reggio curriculum. A flowchart records information in such a way that one can see the step-by-step process of how relationships are built; they help the teachers organize and keep in mind the nature and purpose of the curriculum. The purpose of a flowchart is to tell the past (what happened before), the present (what is being discussed now), and the future (what predictions can be made in preparation for what may emerge). There is an excitement about this process because teachers will see themselves as researchers and look for solutions. Flowcharts are an essential tool for future consideration in establishing an ongoing process of documentation. Flowcharts show acts across time. Therefore, as Forman (May 1995) mentioned in a conversation to the researcher, flowcharts are more of a sequential representation than webbing, which is more of a semantic net with no real flow to it. These are illustrated in the video An Amusement Park for Birds (Gandini and Forman, 1994). The infrastructure, which has been in place for over 30 years and has low turnover, is also unique to the Reggio Emilia Approach. The infrastructure includes atelieristas. In The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education (Edwards, Gandini, Forman, 1993), Vea Vecchi (one of the atelieristas) described her role to Lella Gandini as someone who guides children and teachers. Vecchi stated that this is a role that takes on different styles and attitudes in the 20 preprimary schools in Reggio Emilia. In this conversation with Lella Gandini, Vea Vecchi described the reciprocity of the roles of the teachers, children, and the atelierista: “Working together, guiding the children in their projects, teachers and I have repeatedly found ourselves face-to-face – as if looking in a mirror – learning from one another, and together learning from the children. This way we were trying to create paths to a new educational approach, one certainly not tried before, where the visual language was interpreted and connected to other languages, all thereby gaining in meaning.” (p. 121) Pedagogistas are also an important piece of the infrastructure. The pedagogistas have ongoing collaboration with the people involved with the schools in Reggio Emilia. Most of these pedagogistas are general child development experts, one is a special needs (in the Reggio Emilia schools respectfully called “special rights”) expert, and one is a puppeteer. They are built in as part of the carefully planned support system of the Reggio Emilia schools. Co-construction is strongly emphasized in the approach. For example, a child can learn to construct knowledge with peers and adults. Co-construction emphasizes the social nature of such activities in which cognitive conflict is emphasized. Perhaps Loris Malaguzzi (Edwards, Gandini, Forman, 1993), the founder of the Reggio Emilia experience, referred to the force of co-construction when he advocated the following: “We seek to support those social exchanges that better insure the flow of expectations, conflicts, cooperation, choices, and the explicit unfolding of problems tied to the cognitive, affective, and expressive realms” (p. 62). How Can One Tell If a School Is Truly Following the Reggio Emilia Approach? Any school that claims to have a Reggio Emilia approach should be careful to remember that we live in a different culture. Simply copying how the schools in Reggio Emilia operate may miss the point. When someone visits a program that labels itself as a Reggio Emilia school, it is important to hear that the school is an adaptation of the Reggio Emilia approach and not just an attempt to copy it. This adaptation should show that careful, purposeful discussion and collaboration is happening among the adults in adapting the ideas from Reggio Emilia. This approach was never meant to provide a quick fix to schools. Furthermore, it is helpful to understand why Reggio Emilia experts refer to this as an “approach” and not a “model.” They call it an “approach” because it develops over time with a careful reflection upon the population that is being served. Thus the idea that a school can become a “Reggio Emilia school” overnight is unrealistic and could be problematic. For example, teachers could misinterpret the approach and turn their classes into a free-for-all or eclectic approach that does not help children make strong, purposeful connections. To see if a school is a good adaptation of the Reggio Approach, look for the following indicators:

Teachers reflect on their teaching practices Children are celebrated and seen as competent and capable Teachers realize it’s an ongoing quest to capture what children are actually doing The use of documentation is evident, and it truly illustrates the children’s explorations (e.g., capturing the process children go through to come up with ideas and examining children’s thought) The teachers seek to learn, not copy, Reggio educators and adapt their knowledge in the school relationships are important (for example teachers with families, children with teachers, teachers with each other, etc.) This is a fragment of the article: Different Approaches to Teaching: Comparing Three Preschool Programs