In the Reggio Emelia Philosophy, there is an emphasis on project work- work that takes place over multiple time periods. This type of work is important as it takes an interest of the children, and allows both children and practitioners to become more engrossed in the topic. You may think “I’ve seen them explore this before!” or “What else will they learn about?’ but project work is a crucial part of learning and exploring interests. We can take an interest and really deep dive into the “Why’, allowing us to scratch below the surface of interests. Once practitioners take the time to dive below the surface, we are able to gain a deeper understanding of the learning opportunities, the learning areas and the driving force of the interest. Let’s explore how ideas and interest evolve over the explored time. Preschool had a deep interest in colours and how colours were made. This was inspired by primary colours and how they also crate the secondary colours. At first this might seem like a small interest that has a clear stopping point, mixing the primary colours together to see what colours make the secondary colours. Then mixing those colours to see what they get from the primary, secondary and tertiary colours. This is what I had envisioned, this to be a shorter interest, but boy was I wrong! One day we were creating out own colours our of powder paint, learning about hues, tints, and shades. Once we had made our own colours, they were excited to paint with them on a canvas. This canvas had previously been painted over with black, so we inquired about how the colours would show up on the black background. Will they be dull or bright? From that day forward the deep dive began. Every day they asked to paint on their canvas, adding new shades and colours. The children even began asking about different ways to explore adding paint to this canvas. Our interest in colours grew to how to apply colours while painting! Ahh!! I had learnt one of the whys. ‘Making My Mark”. The children loved seeing the paint the selected and how it showed up on the Canvas. But what happens when your mark gets covered up? This brough in an important skills, communication, and compromise. Working together to make sure that your voice is heard, along that their mark is seen. This ever changing Canvas was brough out or offered every two days if not every day, and it grew and grew. What started as a preschool interest, became a toddler interest as well! Having the children take turns or working simultaneously caused quite the sceptical for the other children. Over the course of a few months we worked on this canvas, adding colour after colour, layer after layer. We uncovered another Why “Lets Get Messy”. This canvas allowed children to explore a sensory need, squishing paint with their hands, squirting paint though a syringe, using sticks or sponges, allowing the fun messy play side to come out while exploring. This project became so much more than the painting, it became about community, sharing, teamwork and communication. The painting had many different stages as it went through during its time in our classroom. It was forgotten about from time to time, until someone was heard talking about what they wanted to add, or can we use those tools? I am so glad we invested our time into this deep dive of colours and painting as form this, we received long lasting and tangible evidence of the importance of project work. It shows how each child brings a different idea on how to further explore the project, it shows how project work can span multiple ages and stages, and how projects are tailored and inspire age-appropriate learning for each child participating.
Since we have explored the deep dive of this interest, it has opened up a wide variety of interests and how each of them have their time in the room until they run their course (Which some projects never do!). We have explored the love of baby dolls and the relationship of families though dramatic play, we have explored the interest of the dragon during Lunar New Year; creating a box dragon that was worked on and added to each day, and we are looking forward to diving into the new interest of travel, by plane train and car. This interest is going to expand our understanding of the world and the different cultures.
Here are a few photos of the projects we have enjoyed exploring throughout the past few months.
