Thursday, September 4, 2014

We're BACK!!!

What a great summer!  Once you start teaching in the Reggio Approach, even your summers off become filled with inspiration and ideas!  A group of teachers traveled back to Becker Farms, where the first graders went on a field trip in June, bringing our own children and picking berries with them. I explored the Charles Burchfield Nature Center with my daughters, which is a place where we saw Burchfield's work on placards and skipped stones in a very shallow creek.  I hope to bring the students there someday!

Even a trip to IKEA on my family vacation turned into Reggio inspiration.

Ikea published stories from schools in Reggio Emilia

We had quite a few sessions of professional development over the summer, as well.  There was time for reflection and time for planning.  We met with our Reggio consultants, the Cadwells, for four of these professional development days and created a theme to base our year upon.

What is Nature?

This is our big theme and we will tie our projects and lessons back to this theme as we move through the year.  Nature is such a big, broad term.  We can reflect upon human nature, the nature of learning, the nature of animals, and nature as in the Great Outdoors. We look forward to this year.

Today was our first day with students.  It was a busy day filled with reunions and introductions. We were very excited to hear the reactions of the students to our rooms.  The atelier has changed locations.  I felt like it was an opportunity for me to design a Reggio-inspired room, on my own, based on all of the experiences I had last year. I want to share images from the atelier and from the rooms of Mrs. Holden and Ms. Boyd.  The visit we made to the Opal School in Portland gave us a better understanding of what a beautiful Reggio-inspired environment should look and feel like, and we used that invaluable experience in designing our rooms for this year.


The Atelier Before the Move:

The Atelier After:

Mrs. Holden's Room (Kindergarten, 102)

Ms. Boyd's Room (First Grade, 108)

It makes saying good-bye to summer much easier when you return to these beautiful rooms with such exciting plans for the year.