I taught Kindergarten and Junior Kindergarten (4’s and 5’s) in the same school for nearly 4 decades. For 26 years, essentially the entire time I was in JK, we were Reggio inspired. I had noticed early on a remarkable difference from my pre-Reggio...
A small group of children (all girls, as this is a story from a single-sex school) met to plan what to build next on the block platform. We had set up this protocol…planning together before building…to encourage collaboration and small group project work,...
I’ve been thinking lately about the right of children to “try.” So much of data-driven, test-apprehensive pedagogy has set the shared value at the right answer. Failure is to be avoided at all costs. If they can’t pass the standardized test,...
Conversations with children about philosophy can be particularly rich. Big questions like “What is real?” or “What makes me me?” or “What happens after people die?”, big questions without obvious answers, are like playgrounds for...
As Autumn blows slowly through the wooded path along the James River in my neighborhood, I am reminded of the conversations held by a group of children I know to co-construct an image of God. How profound their thinking, and how beautiful their representations! This...
This post is number five in a series, each based on a question or questions asked by the co-author of this pilot program, Jen Miller-Taylor. In the Fall of 2016, Jen was an experienced teacher but new to Kindergarten. She declared intent to bring the principles of the...
