Babies

This has been shared by others, but I have to put it here, too.  I am not ashamed to say that I cry when I watch the trailer.  I'm not sure why, but I do. It might be the Sufjan Stevens song.



I'm hoping this will be playing somewhere in Brussels...but it will at least be in the states in April.

Bambini Creativi

 

I am really excited about this story and project happening in Missouri.

Brianne was working at the Chicago Children's Museum, and was introduced to the Reggio Approach.  She met her husband, Enrico, who is from the Emilia Romagna region of Italy.  After getting married, they moved to Reggio Emilia and Brianne found herself learning Italian, and becoming a volunteer at the "Ray of Light" atelier at the Loris Malaguzzi International Centre.  She was in meetings with atelieristas and teachers from around the city - a dream!

AND it got better.  As she and her husband were making their plans to return to Kansas City, Brianne's Grandfather gifted her three acres of land with a church and a small house so that she would be able to make her dream of opening a school into a reality.  Now, Brianne is back in Kansas City, hoping that the school will be open in fall of this year.  In the meantime, she has put together a travelling exhibit, the Bambini Creativi Play Experience Exhibit, that is being showcased all around Kansas City.

Brianne sent over these images of the travelling project, and I have to say, I'm pretty jealous.  At some point, I hope I have her job!  If you are in the area, you should definitely see this work - it seems like a real showing of the open-ended "atelier" aspect of the Reggio Approach, as it works in the states.

Otherwise, you can check out the Bambini Creativi website and Facebook Page.

Sticky

 

  

  

  

Thanks to Teacher Tom and Alderwood House School for the inspiration (and the challenge...)!  We may be amateurs at the tape thing, but we're learning fast.  Some are also learning that you can cut your way out of a tape blocked area, which is causing some drama, but we'll see how Tuesday goes!

Peter and the Wolf

Our unit of inquiry is on the five senses, and this has been our week about sound.  The children have played instruments in dramatic play; created their own intstruments out of recycled materials; and experimented with playing jars of water to learn about how to change the tones.

Also, each day, we have listened to a few minutes of Peter and the Wolf.  Right now, it is rest time on Friday, and we are listening to the full story for the second day.  We also have a listening center with the story on headphones, with a few versions of the book available for the children to look at.

Everyone is listening: some laying and listening, some conducting, some making arm movements like the animals that each instrument represents.  And others are humming along with each character's theme.

In the past, I have used this story along with shadow theatre: the story played on a radio while the children chose parts to play, and they created the story with their bodies as shadows behind a large sheet with a bright light.  I'm not sure if this group would be as interested in that work, but it may be worth a try.

Next week, we talk about touch, so we will have a week full of great sensory experiences!

(By the way, we are of course listening to the David Bowie version of Peter and the Wolf!)

Sketchbooks Mid-Year

We are mid-way through the year, and I sat with the sketchbooks this afternoon to reflect.  What are the children doing?  Is it worth it to have the children working in their sketchbooks every day?  What are they doing?  Has it changed?

In my opinion, it has been very positive.  Some children draw for one minute, some prefer to draw for five.  Five minutes is the maximum time we have - but children are welcome to revisit their sketchbooks anytime they want to during the day.  I think it is an especially positive activity for the children who do not choose to draw during the day.  I am thinking of one boy in particular who does not choose to draw, and typically avoids fine motor activity.  This is a time for him to show us something in this drawing medium - no matter how small it is, or what it is.

Some children have filled four books, some are still on their first.  I have not been as good recently about giving them different mediums.  They have many different drawing tools, but I think we should be including more photography, more collage, more paint, and other mediums for expression.  This does take planning ahead.  I realize that more now that I looked at 13 sketchbooks that only have drawing.  I did find one little surprise -  one girl had taped in a drawing that she had made on a long strip of purple construction paper.  It was piece that she independently chose to add to her cumulative work, and I found that refreshing.

Now, I am thinking about next steps for sketchbooks...another thing to add to the list!

Before :
Our Sketchbook Adventure
Sketchbooks and Leaves
Sketchbooks, Six Weeks In...

Infant Classrooms

I'm still thinking about what infant classrooms might look like, and what might happen there.  I have some inspiration from Reggio in my head, but I have a craving for more information.

I have been looking over at Leaves & Branches, Trunk & Roots, from the Alderwood House School in British Columbia.  Their infant teachers are writing about routines and behaviors and what it might look and sound like in the class, and I'm loving it.  I like the recent episode of posessiveness expressed here.  So much drama!

I'll also share a  photo that I should not have taken in Reggio Emilia.  I also purchased the CD of images from the centers and ReMida, but I managed to grab a few of my own photos.

This setting made me think a lot about what materials very young children use as they learn, how their routines fir in their day, and what an infant teacher's priority is when it comes to working with children as a group.

The Pictorial Webster's

I am thinking of Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities as a beautiful tool for the classroom. In the past, I have used both Zoo - ology and Almost Everything by Joelle Jolivet with children, often as a book that is available for the children to look at independently.  There is no explanation, just a picture.  I imagine this is the same for the Pictoral Dictionary.

The pictures are black and white prints, and, being a dictionary, there is a little bit of everything.

Watching the author's video on the making of the leather-bound, letterpress printed limited edition, I thought about young children and book binding.  We do some simple stapled books, and sometimes sewn books or accordion books.  The idea of making a thick book and stamping on the closed pages is interesting, I think.  I dont know if that would ever come about in the classroom, though!

The video also has me thinking about woodcuts and linocuts.  Have you ever used them in your classroom?  Where do you get your materials?

The video is worth a watch - it is a really interesting project.

Shoebox Living

I like the concept for this project, Shoebox Living.

"125 Children aged between 8 and 10 were given a shoebox and asked to recreate their bedroom, or a room from their home, and to write a few sentences about it."

This is an interesting medium, and an interesting prompt for young children.  How would four- and five-year-olds deal with the idea of taking something they fit in and minaturizing it?  The use of recycled and reused materials adds an interesting element to the finished product, too.

Photographers

 

The cameras are back in the children's hands.  We're thinking about sight and seeing right now, and we're supplementing that with the view of the world through a camera.  The children were told to "take photos of what you want to remember you saw".

Attacking the Edible Schoolyard

This piece in The Atlantic is a different view on the edible schoolyard.  This might help to sum up the article:

The cruel trick has been pulled on this benighted child by an agglomeration of foodies and educational reformers who are propelled by a vacuous if well-meaning ideology that is responsible for robbing an increasing number of American schoolchildren of hours they might other wise have spent reading important books or learning higher math (attaining the cultural achievements, in other words, that have lifted uncounted generations of human beings out of the desperate daily scrabble to wrest sustenance from dirt).

How do you feel?  Do you think that we can only advance with "important books" and "higher math", as a departure from our ancestors who scrabbled in the dirt? Or do you feel that we can (gasp!) find a combination of the two?

 

A few places I like to go :

The Edible Schoolyard 

Kids Gardening 

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center 

Seattle Tilth