A Bridge for the Squirrels

This young group of children watched the squirrels scampering around in the school playground. Running from one tree to the other was exhausting for the tiny creatures. So the children decided the squirrels could use a little help to get from one tree to the other without having to climb up and down.

"The sticks need to be close so the squirrels don't fall through," commented one of the children.

When the bridge was ready the teachers secure it to the two trees.

The children raised there arms as an invitation to the squirrels!

Winter is Black & White

It has been a drab and snowy winter in Ontario. If we're not in a deep freeze then we're buried in snow.  Most days the sun hides behind behind the clouds reluctant to poke its head out and offer us a reprieve.  So it's no wonder that this child, when asked what winter is like replied, "Winter is black and white and sometimes grey!"

Charcoal on white paper are the perfect tools to capture the dreary winter scenery!

Snap, Crackle, Pop

What could this baby gain from a simple encounter with bubble paper?

There is much to be said about engaging the senses and the implications this type of exposure has for future learning. Each time a baby hears, smells, touches and encounters object, neurons grow and develop in the brain. Sensory information is banked and with each new encounter the baby remembers the previous information that was stored and again new learning occurs. This is referred to as "cognitive bootstrapping" Karyn Wellhousen 2001

A sheet of bubble paper has a great deal of possibilities for learning.

 When Jenna was placed on top of the bubble paper she stretched out her arms and a few of the bubbles exploded, making enough of a popping sound to catch her attention.

Curious to find the source of the sound, she sat up and began to press her finger to the bubbles. Again she heard a pop (Cause and effect).  After pressing several more she bounced up and raised her arms in triumph.



Although she could not speak her message was clear "I did it!"



"Drawing to Learn"

These two children were asked to draw on existing knowledge to sketch pictures of where water comes from.

Andrea- There is water under the ground. People put the pipes in there and that's how the water gets inside your house and it becomes tap water. The trees get their water through the roots because they don't have pipes.

Kevin- You can dig a hole and build a well to draw water from underground. First you dig a hole until you can see the water. Then you build a wall along the ground so people don't fall when they get the water. You need a bucket and a long rope to reach the water. That's how the well works.


"Children's drawings are not only beautiful to look at but more importantly they tell us much about how children think and see the world around them. You will find that whenever you ask a child to draw you a picture about an event of situation they often come to the table full of ideas and concepts of their own.

This is an excerpt from http://www.videatives.com/ and our esteemed friend and colleague Dr. George Forman.

Drawing to learn is a term coined by Dr G. Forman

This approach asks the children to represent, with marks, his/her current theory about how something works;not simply to make a representation of the shape or look of an event, but to draw an explanation of how it all works; that is, to draw his understanding. The child may go through various steps in this process.

The child commits his ideas to paper before actually viewing the event. having completed the drawing, he/she then visits the event or action in his/her drawing. The child returns to the drawing table to draw the combination of his ideas and his memory of what he saw. Together, these three parts demonstrate that children draw what they know (before the visit) and can study their drawings (after their visit) to help them reconstruct an incomplete theory (after the visit).

It is important to ask a child to draw before looking at an object so that drawing flows from the child's assumptions about function (for example how a bike works) rather than observation (how the bike looks as a static object).

In drawing to learn, one literally encourages the children to take risks and thus to make mistakes so that their misconceptions can become visible and thereby more explicitly repaired."

The Daisy-Hope for Spring!



The daisy is a beautiful bloom that holds much promise for the wonders of Spring!



The Lion

Working with clay can be quite challenging especially when a kiln is not available. We introduce clay to our students when they are as young as 15 months so by the time they reach the JK and Sk classes they are excellent sculptors.

Under the masterful hands of these two girls, a block of clay became "The Lion."

This was an extension of the Mascot that was designed for the class soccer game.(post can be viewed under November 29, 2010)

A City is A Place with Voices-In Rome you long for the country; in the country - oh inconstant! - you praise the distant city to the stars. ~Horace, Satires

One of the most reoccurring interests in our schools is the City . The sounds, the buildings, the hustle and bustle captivates the children. Taylor aged 4 (the child in these photos) had some interesting theories on city life.

"A city has voices, lots of voices. People moving everywhere. There are lots of cars and buses and office buildings where people go to work. There are banks where they keep all the money. There are tall buildings but no houses. People don't live in cities just work there. The best part is the sky scrapers. Those are the building that touch the clouds! And one more thing there are no trees in the city, none!"

The See Saw in the Forest

These children were pleasantly surprised when they discovered this seesaw in the forest. They were all given the opportunity to jump aboard and try to teeter it back and forth. It was interesting to watch the children as they negotiated ways to make the log shift. The difficulty lay in the fact that the log was not evenly distributed on the fulcrum (although it appeared to be) therefore equal weight on either side would not move it. The weight needed to be heavier on the short side but could the children figure this out?

Children Always Find Interesting Ways...

Practicing early math skills doesn't have to be tedious for young children. When this snowman was made using "Loose Materials" the children commented that he was a "big snowman."

"Just how big is he?" asked their teacher. "How can we measure him?"

The children decided to use their hands and their shoes as their non standard measuring tools.

Is Anyone Looking for Forest Animals

The Mitten by Jan Brett is a classroom favorite and every winter the children find new ways to bring the characters of this delightful tale to life. This group of JK/SK students is preparing these masks for a class production. They are already able to recite the entire story.

Not a Reggio Kids Post but a Wonderfully Inspiring Tribute!

Kim MacGregor organized this flash mob of 200 dancers to launch the "feel good" movement, "I Believe She's Amazing" in honor of her friend Erika Heller who passed…

Have a wonderful day!

Simple Discoveries

The forest provides the children with the opportunity to explore and appreciate the natural world around them. It takes the

classroom outside. In our culture children are pressed to spend more time indoors in structured school settings with little opportunity to value the learning experiences offered by the natural world.

Researchers have found that “ the more personal children’s

experiences with nature, the more environmentally concerned and active children are likely to become” (Wilson 1996) .

Exploring outdoors helps children to develop what has been termed as their ecopsychological self–the child’s sense of self in relation to the natural world (Phenice & Griffore 2003). Researchers believe that children are born with a natural sense of relatedness to nature and that this innate and developmental tendency towards empathy or affiliation with nature needs to be nurtured in the earliest years of life (Barrows 1995, Lewis 1996, Nelson 1993, Sobel 1996, Tilbury 1996, Wilson 1993 & 1997). Children’s draw to nature can best be identified by their love of fairy tales that are set in nature - wherein the characters are animals (Barrows 1995). Nurturing a child’s connectedness to nature will help to foster positive

environmental attitudes. (Shultz, et al. 2004) It is also known that children’s early experiences in life give shape to the values and

attitudes they will have toward the world later in life. (Wilson 19945 & 1996). Offering children the opportunity to explore nature and appreciate what it offers helps to develop a basic respect for it and a genuine caring for its preservation.

And so we head into the forest to help the children explore a setting where they can see the changes of the seasons, find the animals that live within its trees and under the rocks, become explorers, gatherers, researchers and makers of theories about how it all works.