Reggio Emilia - a city built for its citizens

Reggio Emilia is in Northern Italy. It is beautiful, it is historic, it is cultured, it is another world. It is also the epicenter of some well known and revered educational thinking about child-centered learning.

As an early years teacher, Reggio Emilia is a place I've always wanted to see, a place where an international study tour is the stuff of dreams. But dream we did, and in November I was afforded the opportunity to take two of our Prep teachers to this inspirational city to learn about their work with Reggio children and see what links we could make to our own context back at Peregian Springs SS.

This stunning medieval city opens up its piazzas and squares to the people and children spend a lot of time in the piazzas learning how to map the spaces, know where they've come from, learn to be citizens of the city, help others, study the Literature and Mathematics of the past (amazingly relevant today) and drink in the beauty of their particular context which changes with the seasons. The week was a Journey into the Rights of Children and it was over too soon.

It was inspirational, and there will be a little bit of Reggio coming to our Prep classrooms in the near future.