The 3rd teacher: our new Reggio inspired classroom

So if you have read my last 2 posts, you will know that I have  decided  to integrate some of the Reggio Emilia approach to my teaching methods. But so that we are clear,  I do not claim to be a Reggio teacher. I have, however, after a few months of study, learned to borrow bits and pieces from different Reggio-inspired teachers, blogs and from many books on the approach. It's not perfect yet.. There are things that I would like to change completely but time and resources were short so I had to do with what I had or what I could find at home (or in car boot sales).

 So where did I start? I transformed my classroom and started with a blank canvas. First, I moved all the furniture in the middle of the classroom. I removed most of the materials too and piled them up wherever I could! What a mess!!!

I studied many pictures of Reggio classrooms and I do love how they are designed to become the third teacher. If the environment is set up right, the children will be more likely to be actively engaged with the materials. I have made sure that the children are actively engaged and that they are  learning through play. I kept my Montessori areas (maths, literacy, science, sensorial and practical Exercises areas) but I made room for a block area and for a small world corner. 

Some of you may ask me why I didn't add a home corner, and why I chose a small world area instead. First of all, I don't have a huge space to play with. So my options were limited. Secondly, at this stage of development and with limited exposure to real life experiences, small children benefit a lot by having small world play clearly modelled to them. Contrary to popular belief, children don't always know how to pretend play, especially with imaginative toys promoting role-play; they do need guidance to show how they can re-enact situations they encounter. Why? Maybe because they have not yet either experienced the scenario for themselves in real life or watched the adult demonstrating what to do. Or because they haven't got the skills and maturity to do so just yet.  When I started my preschool, I did have a small home corner (despite what Montessori thought) but I had observed how chaotic it could become: children were not ready to engage in the early stages of proper imaginative play and the corner was usually a chaotic  and messy space where children felt they could go a bit "wild" . So I got rid of the homecorner as I found it unproductive and as I was eager to follow Montessori by the books. But after a few years of observations and work with the children, I can now say that in my books, Small World play is the stepping stone to homecorners. Let me explain:

1. children start to learn how to use their imagination independently at first then with one other peer.
2. They start to narrate their play and thus developing early story-telling skills
3. They start to re-enact familiar experiences in a similar way to role-play
4.  I found that small world play can be very cheap to set up if you really want to and easy to make from found, natural and recycled materials. 
5. Small World Play promotes  creativity if you provide children with open-ended materials
6. Engaging for all ages from 2 up until 10! Same scenes, different skills and outcomes. 

The children I teach in my preschool are aged 2.5 to 4.5 this year and I think the Small World Corner will address their needs much better. Here is a snap shot of our corner:



And here is our new construction area:

I really think blocks are the epitome of open-ended materials. Children express their creativity when playing with blocks, making designs, constructions and sculptures. In the construction area, a child needs to think, to solve problems, to negotiate and invent. And while they do that, they learn about Blocks require a child to think creatively, problem solve, negotiate and invent. They learn about balance, angles, height, perspective, stability and symmetry through trial and error as they construct their buildings. Magic!! And if you add a mirror, the child will learn  to think 3-dimensionally!!!! 

I have re-thought our reading corner and excluded it from our circle time area. It is more defined this way, especially as I have tried to turn it into a little cosy and private area with the help of a few cushions scattered on the floor and a little lamp (please note that I need to add an extension to the lamp and hide the lead as it is not safe the way I am showing it to you right now). I am hoping the children will find it inviting and will feel more enticed to come along and quick a book for quiet time.

Beside the reading corner is our circle time area. The calendar hasn't been changed and children will sit on the floor together.

Right beside our circle time area, you will recognise our jigsaw shelving unit (which happens to also serve the purpose of a desk - my desk!).

Right beside the jigsaws is now our nature table! I am hoping to use it a lot more than I have in the past and I will look for inspiration on all the wonderful blogs across the blogosphere. I wish I knew how to work with felt and make all these beautiful landscapes that my dear friend Karen creates (click right here to have a look at what she does! Amazing!). Unfortunately, I don't.. I have added mirrors to the table and in front of it to add another dimension to the display and to attract the children. I haven's set it up yet but I will keep you posted on our different types of nature/interest tables in the future.

I haven't moved our science shelves. They are fine where they are and the materials can be used on the round table placed right besides them. On the left hand side of the science area, we are back to the construction corner.

As you enter the room, the first corner you meet, right on the left by the window is our Montessori literacy area (writing and pre-reading). I have a mirror displayed on a small easel for the beginning of the year: I guess you can consider this as my 1st Reggio provocation. I am hoping the children will look at themselves and feel like drawing a self-portrait using the markers/crayons, and googly eyes at their disposition on the table and shelves.

Montessori insets and markers/crayons

Reggio provocation?

Tracing tray

Montessori sandpaper letter and my phonics booklets

In the centre of the classroom, you can see our Montessori Practical Exercises shelving units.  Here is a quick look at what I have put on our shelves for the start of September.

spooning and tonguing

nuts and bolts, key sets and salt pouring

fine motor skills (pincer grasp and hammering, play dough) and our tray of table mats

opening and closing bottles, and transferring activity from one jug to another

Using pegs

Catching fish ( magnetic game) and lacing activity

More lacing as well as balancing game

On the right hand side of the PLE area, you will find the Montessori Sensorial corner, right in front of the reading den.

By the Sensorial area, you can see our Montessori maths shelving until and our Geography/History corner.

And of course, our little art corner with the sink right beside it.

So what do you think? Any suggestions? As I explained, it is going to be a progressive transformation. There are so much more to do !! Stay tune for our next post on all the new materials I have brought in following the Reggio Emilia approach..

A touch of beads in our new environment!

Before I can show you the work I have done in our classroom, I need to show you what I have just  made!!! According to the Reggio Emila approach, the environment must be the 3rd teacher. Construction of chandeliers is a must in any Reggio Inspired classrooms, from what I have read anyhow (books, articles, blogs). Children participate in the making of chandeliers in the classroom, before they are being displayed in their full glory! Hold on, hold on... I didn't actually make a chandelier but I used the idea to create a "picture/drawing/note hanging system".. I don't really know what to call it, to be honest, but I love it. My son (6) and his little cousin (5) helped me and this is what we came up with: 

All I  needed was a piece of drift wood, buttons, and beads! Lots of beads!!!!

 

 

Stay tuned and I will have the photos of our new environment in a few days. 

The hundreds Languages of Children

The Hundred Languages of Childhood

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 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 Approach

Mini beasts studies

So after our studies on birds, it was time to talk about minibeasts in our garden! We started our studies with "The Hungry Caterpillar" from Eric Carle. Not only is it a good stepping stone to the topic, but it was also a great revision of the days in the week (sequencing) and of numbers.

 

 

 

The children love this very simple story and the idea was to ask them to put it back in order. What did the caterpillar eat first? second? (We learnt about ordinal numbers too!). Why did the caterpillar need to eat so much?  We talked about the caterpillar's humongous appetite and his metamorphosis. If you were that hungry, what kind of food would you want to eat lots of? Why does the caterpillar need to eat so much? I let the children think a lot and their thinking led them to ask more and more questions.

 

The children wanted to make a caterpillar. So I came up with this (the fabric balls are glued on a MDF plank):

 

 

 

 

Next, I asked them what they knew about  butterflies. So we read another book,  a bit more scientific but I skipped the hard bits and concentrated on the most interesting parts.

 

 

And obviously, we had to do a bit more art:

 

 

But the children were still not finished with their "investigation" and they asked me if there were many other bugs using cocoons or "chrysalis" ? So I mentioned beetles, ladybugs, fleas, wasps, ants.. Some of them were not very familiar with the term of "beetles". So I introduced a 3rd book which gave us a glimpse at the most common insects in our garden. The children loved that book as an insect seems to be hiding on each right page and they need to guess what it is before I can read the facts about that particular bug.  So the book turned up very entertaining!

 

 

 

So that's where we are at the moment.. I don't want to overwhelm the children with too many details. Learning about bugs was like learning about dinosaurs. It really sparked up their imagination. Today, we tried to figure out what bugs could do: jump, sing, buzz, sting, fly, glow, make honey/silk etc.. and they compared it with what they could do themselves! And of course, this led on to another dimension: superheroes: if I could fly, that would mean I am a superhero!... Well if I could be a superhero, I would want to be able to sting bad people..... You see???? Keep in touch!

 

Oh Happy days....

And the fun continues with our new playhouse! We had a cut one of the big branches overhanging the preschool as it used to bang dangerously against the roof on windy days. I asked my husband to leave the pine cones behind for the children to pick up today. The kids ran to the playhouse and started pretending that they needed pine cones to make a fire inside. So much laughter! So much noise! Great imagination, great role playing! Some of the kids were in charge of collecting the pine cones while others prepared diner. But a (pretend) fire started and they had to call firemen! Help, Help!! To the rescue!! It was so good to see them all playing together as a team. They all contributed to the script!! I am so glad I invested in this playhouse! So glad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our preschool 's new tree house

Yesterday, I told the children that when they would come back the next day, there would be a surprise for them in the garden! OMG!! Kids got so excited. They started trying to guess what it could be.. a see-saw... a new swing? One little boy even thought that the men were building a spaceship so that they all could go to Mars to meet aliens!!!!

And then, it became obvious this morning:  "we 've got a new a tree house!!!!".

building in progress

 

the first 5 reaching the playhouse!! Hurray!!

 

 

Learning about Springtime

It is supposed to be spring here and yet, at times, it looks like winter! Yet, we have started our nature studies and it's a slow progress as, for one, plants are slow growing, bugs are barely appearing and what am I to show the kids??? This is what we have achieved so far: 

First of all, we learn about the difference between "plants" and "animal" and the children used the worksheet below to summarise our discussions a circle time: they had to cut out the pictures and classify them. 

Next, we planted runner bean seeds. Kids were so excited!! We waited for a good sunny morning to do a bit gardening and waited for nature's little miracles!  Unfortunately, only half of the seeds turned into a plant!! It was a bit disappointed for some of the kids. So, we are working on another little gardening project to make it up! The idea of the glass jars was to show the children how the roots appear first under the ground!! 

And then we also made paper little flowers just for fun! 

As the children lhad earnt that some bugs hibernate during winter and come back to life in spring, they took it upon themselves to try to wake them up one morning! But first, they had to find some! and my clever bunch knew exactly where to look!!

This brought us to talk about food.... bugs are food for birds!!!! And we started observing the ones who keep flying in our garden. We are using a book called "First Book of garden Birds". This is a beautifully illustrated book depicting birds in details with very simple and useful information about each species!

 

 

 I love these spontaneous studies as I call them. The children choose what they want to learn and create their own little curriculum. One child described the bids' claws as "feet" and this prompted us to talk about the different parts of the body of a bird. The children learnt about using the appropriate words and I gathered our learning into a little booklet as you can see below.

This is the template the children used to create their own booklet.

These are the children's booklets ready to be filled and coloured.

 

 

This led us to use our hand to draw different types of birds. Imagination is great: great blue tits, sparrow, peacocks, turkeys etc... Cute, aren't they?

 

More about nature and gardening.. so keep in touch!

 

The Trinomial Cube .. A success!

After our Easter Break, I introduced the  Trinomial cube to our classroom. The kids were ery curious and it was a hit! The Trinomial cube  is a Montessori -designed material that teaches early math skills and help him create connections that will lead him to easier understanding of math concepts.  To see how we use the cube, please click right here and this will give you a step by step demonstration of the activity on YouTube. I have added below photographs of the wok in progress these past few days with the Trinomial cube.