The Reggio Approach

The Reggio Emilia philosophy is an approach to teaching, learning and a pedagogy focused on pre school and primary education and I am a huge fan of this approach and implementing the ideas in our settings.

The northern Italian town of Reggio Emilia has become world renowned for its forward thinking approach, where early childhood education views young children as individuals who are curious about their world and the children are the main initiators of the learning process.

They are inspired by their own interests and learning is driven by the child who takes an active role in co-constructing their own knowledge. This approach encourages self-expression, communication, thinking, team work and problem-solving in the child. Children are influenced by everything that is around them and the environment itself acts as a ‘third teacher’. 

The learning process is considered to be of much higher importance than the final product and teachers create in-depth projects based on information from parents and observation as well as the interests of children.

The whole experience of working in this way is about the PROCESS, not the outcome, which is why I am so passionate about it as a way of APPROACHING CREATIVITY. As part of the Reggio philosophy, I encourage setting things out for children to make their choices, also working collaboratively, exploring large scale, making and joining and exploring their interests allowing TIME for their ideas and documenting the process along the way,

I was very fortunate to gain valuable experience and insight into this practice, as part of a full year of being an artist in residence in a nursery setting. Here we celebrated the magic of what the children produced and developed across the year, it was JOY in the making!

If you want to know more about working in The Reggio Way or implementing the creative ideas with staff in your setting, please get in touch….