Guiding Principles

The fundamental Principles of Reggio Approach are based on proven research in early childhood education and form the corner stone of our curriculum.

• Environment enhances the learning process.

The piazza and the atelier are the heart of the preschool. Space is designed to encourage encounters, communications and relationship.

• Pedagogy of listening & relationship.

Listening to children's theories enhance the possibility of discovering how children think and how they both question and develop a relationship with reality. This possibility is magnified when it occurs withoin a group context that allows for the experience of others to be shared and debated.

• Reciprocity of children and their multiple languages.

Children use many forms of symbolic representation: words, movements, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, collage, dramatic play, music (the hundred languages). In using many material they discover, communicate, what they know and understand, what they wonder about, question and imagine.

• Educate ate nurturers and guides.

Educators and artists (ateliersta) facilitate children's exploration of themes - shor - or long - term projects and guide experiences of open-ended discovery and problem-solving. They know how to plan, observe and listen closely to children; how to ask questions, discover children's ideas, hypothsis and theories and provide occaions for discovery and learning.

• Parents are Partners

A mutually supportive relationship between school and family is critical.

• The value observation and documentation

Documenting children's daily experiences and ongoing projects gives meaning and identity to all that the children do. It is through the observation and documentation that the teachers are able to gain insight into the thoughts of the children, determine further investigation for working on topics, create a history of the work and generate further interest.

• Professional development

Through discussion and interpretation of their own work and the work of the children, educators see themselves as researchers, and are engagged in continuous on-going training and theoretical exploratopn.