Reggio Emilia Study Tour 2012

I have worked in the early years sector since 1994 and made my first study tour to Reggio Emilia in 2003.  I can honestly say that until my first visit to Reggio I did not understand (properly) what my role needed to be in order to best support children's learning. It is, of course, a glib thing to say but... Reggio changed my life.

After my first visit I simply wanted to move there and work in a Reggio pre-school. I wanted to be part of something so inspirational and so open to new possibilities (I speak some Italian so this was not as far-fetched as it sounds). But I came to see how I could draw inspiration from the Reggio Approach and yet, "trust in the richness of our own context" here in the UK.

I have since been back on six further study tours and will be accompanying two educators from Reflections on the next study tour in April 2012.

It is impossible to describe the richness and quality of the environments, the educators' passion and commitment to ongoing research, and the sheer beauty of the schools.  Which is why I simply recommend that you go.  













If you work with young children as an educator or artist, or if you influence policy regarding children, then beg, borrow or steal to take a place on next year's UK study tour to Reggio.  Information here through Sightlines Initiative:

http://www.sightlines-initiative.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=reggio-study-week.html&Itemid=7

I look forward to meeting you there.

Martin Pace
1.12.11    

Reflections Charity Choice

Reflections Nursery gave parents and staff a choice of three charities to support over the next two years. The votes have been counted and they were disappointingly close - which of course means that nearly two-thirds of people will not get the charity they voted for. You may have spotted a similarity with the UK political electoral system; so I guess we have at least been democratic.

The results are as follows:
Sponsoring children through Plan UK - 88 votes
Ferring Country Centre - 108 votes
Re-Create - a new charity to be set up by Reflections providing creative opportunities for local children - 115 votes.

So Re-Create it is!

May we take the opportunity to say a huge thank you to all who voted. We will register Re-Create immediately and start work on fundraising plans

Exhibition at Lime Cafe, St Paul's Centre, Worthing

Twenty panels from the Reflections Nursery exhibition, 'Making Learning Visible' are on constant display inside and outside the glass cube at St Paul's Centre, Chapel Road, Worthing. 

Go along to the Lime Cafe for a taste of the exhibition if you missed it, or if you just want to revisit some of the children's experiences in the nursery over the last five years. 

Reflections Fundraising - what next?

A personal view

It's 5.30am and I'm up with my 2 year old watching BBC One World. The programme is about Kenyan teenagers visited by two teenagers from the UK. The Kenyan children run 2 hours to get to school and live in a small mud hut with an oil lamp to study by. The Kenyan boy got his first pair of shoes when he was 15 years old.

Twenty-five years ago I spent 6 months living in Kenya - the people were astonishing.  Warm, friendly, welcoming, modest, kind, intelligent and hardworking. They had so little but shared everything they had with me. I came home humbled and inspired - and then did nothing about it. A very typical story.

In 2007 we chose to focus our fundraising at Reflections Nursery on raising £20,000 to build a school in Ghana through Plan UK, an international charity.  We looked for an African project which would make a difference to children's lives.  We believed that education was a good place to start.  Three years later the school was built and we are now looking for our next fundraising challenge.

In the spirit of democracy we have provided families and staff at the nursery with three choices - the winning charity will be the focus of our fundraising efforts over the next two years. Of course, it is also in the spirit of pragmatism, as the families and staff will spearhead and contribute to our fundraising.

The choices are: Plan UK - sponsoring as many children as we can, probably in Africa; and two local charities; one of which is a charity Reflections would set up in Worthing to support children's creativity, the other is Ferring Country Centre, providing education for children about real food.

My view though is that we have so much in this country, and the developed countries in general.  The 'Skip Lunch, Save A Life' campaign of Save the Children sums it up for me - we wouldn't really miss a few calories at midday but the cost of our lunch could buy say, a fishing net for someone in a developing country which may mean the difference between life and death.

I completely understand why most people choose to fundraise locally - it must feel meaningful, especially if the benefits are visible. However, my vote (and I only have one) will be going to Plan UK this time. For me, in a global society, we should care for those who need it most.  And the results can be very visible - you just need to get up at 5.30am and watch BBC. :)  

Martin Pace

     
       

Making Learning Visible - Professional Development Day - 8th Ocotber 2011

Thanks to all involved in the Professional Development Day last Saturday.  What a great day - full of interesting questions and wonderful dialogue.  The delegates' feedback has been overwhelmingly positive so far, so many thanks to all who took time to complete our feedback forms. Thanks too, to all at St Paul's Centre & Lime Cafe for supporting the day.

Angela's artists' perspective on documentation went down very well (she got slightly better feedback than Martin for his overview of Reggio & Reflections!) and there were some lovely comments, mainly about the inspirational children's work.      

There were many comments about how motivated and engaged the staff team were - so a huge thanks to all Reflections' educators. 

We are looking forward to our next Professional Day in 2012.
 

MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE - An Exhibition of Children's Work in Worthing

There is still time to see our exhibition of 5 years of children's project work at Reflections Nursery.  The exhibition is in St Paul's Exhibition Centre, Chapel Road, Worthing until 4.30pm on 7th October.  Or, if you are an early years professional or primary teacher you are welcome to register on our Professional Development Day and Private Viewing on Saturday 8th October.  Contact susan@reflectionsnurseries.co.uk for details.     

Last Chance to Book for Reflections Professional Development Day - 8th October

Making Learning Visible

A Professional Development Day focussing on the use of documentation to support children’s and adult’s learning

Date: Saturday 8^th October 2011, from 10.00am until 3.30pm

Venue:  St Paul’s Exhibition Centre, and Reflections Nursery, Worthing, West Sussex

Cost:  £45 including refreshments and a light lunch

Exhibition: The day includes a tour of the exhibition entitled, ‘Making Learning Visible - 5 years of children’s project work at Reflections Nursery’  

How can we best learn how children learn?  What is the value of documenting children’s learning for early years educators? What can children learn from documentation of their own work? What value should we place on the learning journey itself, rather than the outcomes?

Martin Pace, Director of Reflections, along with Angela Chick, Senior Atelierista and Yvonne Barr, Nursery Manager will be supported by other Reflections educators to give presentations and workshops covering five years of children’s learning at Reflections. The use of documentation as a reflective tool will be investigated.

Participants:

We welcome registrations from all those working in the area of early childhood education and on creative arts/education projects with young children.  

Programme

- A tour of the exhibition: ‘Making Learning Visible – five years of children’s project work at Reflections Nursery’

- Presentation & Discussion: Drawing on the Reggio Approach and the value of documentation at Reflections

- Lunch and a tour of Reflections Nursery with Reflections educators

- Workshop 1: Documenting long-term project work in Reflections Pre-school Atelier

- Workshop 2: Project work with Reflections Toddler Section

- A further tour of the nursery with a Reflections educator

Please contact susan@reflectionsnurseries.co.uk for further details.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY - 8th October 2011

Making Learning Visible

A Professional Development Day focussing on the use of documentation to support children’s and adult’s learning

Date: Saturday 8^th October 2011, from 10.00am until 3.30pm

Venue:  St Paul’s Exhibition Centre & Reflections Nursery, Worthing 

Cost:  £45 including refreshments and a light lunch

Exhibition: The day includes a tour of the exhibition entitled, Making Learning Visible - 5 years of children’s project work at Reflections Nursery 

How can we best learn how children learn?  What is the value of documenting children’s learning for early years educators? What can children learn from documentation of their own work? What value should we place on the learning journey itself, rather than the outcomes?

Martin Pace, Director of Reflections, along with Angela Chick, Senior Atelierista and Yvonne Barr, Nursery Manager will be supported by other Reflections educators to give presentations and workshops covering five years of children’s learning at Reflections. The use of documentation as a reflective tool will be investigated.

Participants:

We welcome registrations from all those working in the area of early childhood education and on creative arts/education projects with young children.  

Programme

A tour of the exhibition: ‘Making Learning Visible – five years of children’s project work at Reflections Nursery’

Presentation & Discussion: Drawing on the Reggio Approach and the value of documentation at Reflections

Lunch and a tour of Reflections Nursery with Reflections educators

Workshop 1: Documenting long-term project work in Reflections Pre-school Atelier. An artist's persective.

Workshop 2: A tour of the exhibition in discussion groups led by a Reflections Educator 

A further tour of the nursery with a Reflections educator

Please contact susan@reflectionsnurseries.co.uk for further details.

Light Everywhere! A new project workbook from On Reflection Publishing

“Once children are helped to perceive themselves as authors and inventors, once they are helped to discover the pleasures of inquiry, their motivation and interest explode.”

Loris Malaguzzi, Reggio Emilia 

We are thrilled with our latest publication - Light Everywhere! This is Reflections' second project workbook published by On Reflection Publishing and to be released in late September. 

Between Autumn 2010 and March 2011 children investigated the properties of light in the pre-school Atelier at Reflections Nursery. Their work involved creating sculptures in the dark with glowsticks; drawing with torches; mapping light as it travelled and investigating the colours of light. They discovered that light is everywhere. 

To pre-order the book at £10.99 plus p+p please e-mail susan@reflectionsnurseries.co.uk

MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE - An Exhibition of Children's Work

Reflections Nursery & Forest School will be exhibiting work by children since 2006 to celebrate first 5 years of Reflections. 

Entitled 'Making Learning Visible' (a direct reference to pedagogical documentation in the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia), children's project work will be displayed at Lime Cafe, St Paul's on Richmond Road, Worthing, UK from 2nd to 8th October 2011. 

The installation/ exhibition will be interactive for children and adults and will feature documented projects ranging from the very first project called, "We get milk from goats, too" through to more recent projects such as "Crocodile!" and "Light Everywhere". 

Lots more information will follow...       

Reflections Forest School - short film

We have added a short film to Vimeo as a taster of Reflections Forest School to give you a flavour of what the children get up to:

http://vimeo.com/25553467

Or go to our Forest School Page:

http://www.reflectionsnurseries.co.uk/default.aspx?pageid=39

Reflections Forest School Documentary 2011 Parts 1 and 2

Have a look on You Tube to see our Forest School documentary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-cuLtYOzBM and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb8P674XiIw&feature=related

It's a useful introduction to Forest School if you are wondering what they are all about.  Reflections takes groups of 3 and 4 year olds into the woodland twice a week, for 30 weeks a year.  Following our approach in the nursery, the children tend to take the lead. Experiences include physical activities; storytelling; theorising & problem-solving; developing an understanding of nature, flora & fauna; creative expression; and development of skills. We give time to relationships and teamwork and children develop independence, self-regulation and confidence in the outdoors.  

For more information go to: 

http://www.reflectionsnurseries.co.uk/default.aspx?pageid=39

    

How do you work with pre-school children?

How do you approach your work with pre-school children? At Reflections we tend to approach our work in the way illustrated below, beginning with a provocation based on the child's or children's interests.  Does anyone/ everyone else? Please let us have your comments on our approach and any comparisons with the way in which you might work.  Thanks in advance :)

Great woodland session in the rain today!

The children had a great time in the forest in the rain - we made a mammoth trap. Sadly we didn't catch any mammoths but we managed to trap four children. :)

What Reflections' Crocodile project book is all about...

Just thought it best to clear up any misconceptions. The Crocodile! project book, published by On Reflection Publishing, features a three-month project by children aged 3-5 years in Reflections Nursery, Worthing, UK.   

Crocodile! is not intended as a 'how to' book. The book is intended to show how the project worked in this particular setting, with this group of 50 children, at a particular time, following the interests and motivations of the group and a number of individual children. Our hope is that educators, artists and anyone who takes an interest in children's development will take ideas from our approach to working with children which might inform their own practice or understanding.

In this project, our approach was to present the children with something new and observe, and later analyse, their response to it - in this case a crocodile head. If we have a message, it isn't, 'get a crocodile head'.  It would be more about introducing new concepts to children and standing back to see where they might lead, then slowing things down to experience the learning.   We hope that you will approach the book in this context. 

Please see feedback from a recent buyer of the book:

I have received the copy of Crocodiles today and wanted to congratulate you all on a superb piece of work, from the project and practice to the quality of the book.  I hope you plan to produce some more examples of your work in the future.

Jan White

Consultant for Outdoor Provision in the Early Years

       
Reflections Nursery, Worthing, West Sussex, UK