Mar
16
2012
Mrs. Argus
Provocation for storytelling: What stories can you tell with these materials?
- Angela carefully chooses some natural materials to tell her story.
Friends work to create a camping story with our natural materials.
During my trip to the Opal School in Portland, I learned about story provocation with materials. There is much being done at their school around Story Workshop. Story workshop is a process where children are encouraged to tell stories with rich materials placed thoughtfully throughout the room and are also guided with some questions as a provocation. We have introduced some natural materials on a new shelf that have greatly intrigued the children, including seed pods, branches, shells, and other things. We encouraged the children to ponder using the materials to tell a story. There is a question in a picture frame on the shelf that reads, “What stories could you tell with these materials?” Some of their stories have been so rich and interesting. (as you probably can see from the pictures above.) Miss Schmidt and I also encouraged the kids to tell stories about worms with clay and watercolors. The question asked of them was, “Do worms have stories to tell?” Their creations have been incredible. Such imaginative and passionate stories have arisen from this question.
We also have another exciting event take place in the morning. We were lucky enough to have Mr. Beery come in and dabble with us in stop motion animation. Using a simple Ipad app, a small group of children worked with Mr. Beery to create a worm story. The finished result was SO NEAT! The class loved celebrating the hard work of our friends and are all anxious to have their turn at stop motion animation with Mr. Beery.
Mr. Beery and friends work with stop motion animation to create a worm story.
Tags: creativity, curious, project, Reggio, story telling
Apr
04
2011
Mr. Smith
Mar
05
2011
Mr. Smith
Observational drawing of a Tulip Tree leaf
Many years ago, Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio approach wrote a beautiful poem titled The Hundred Languages of Children. The message of this poem is that young children have many ways to express what they know about the world including drawing, painting, drama, sculpture, dance and many, many more. In many schools today, the capacity children have for showing what they know in a myriad of creative ways is overlooked in favor of expressing knowledge through only reading, writing and arithmetic. Continue Reading »
Tags: arithmetic, art, Malaguzzi, poem, reading, Reggio, writing
Mar
05
2011
Mr. Smith
This entry is one of a series of entries designed to familiarize families with the core values of the Reggio approach to education. In the Preschools and Infant-Toddler centers of Reggio Emilia and in Reggio inspired schools in the United States, educators have what is referred to as a strong “image of the child”. A definition of “image of the child” would be capable, creative and responsible. Continue Reading »
Tags: capable, children, creative, image of the child, preschool, Reggio, responsible, thinking
Feb
27
2011
Mr. Smith
Do you have preschool child? Do you need childcare for your kindergarten or first grade child? Good news! Continue Reading »
Tags: childcare, kindergarten, preschool, Reggio
