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An Example of a Reggio Project Darian and Nina are working in the garden, planting strawberries. "Miss Tara?" Nina asks one of the teachers, "Do butterflies eat strawberries? I want to have butterflies to play with". "I don't know, Nina", replies Miss Tara. "I know that butterflies eat pollen, which is found inside some flowers. They might like strawberries too. What do you think? How could we find out?" Darian suggest going to the school research library and researching butterflies. With the teachers help, Darian and Nina discover that butterflies like sunflowers, lavender, and zinnias. They decide that it would be a good idea to plant these flowers in the garden. During circle time the next morning, the teachers ask Darian and Nina to share what they learned during their research Nina tells the children that they could plant "many many many flowers and have a whole yard full of butterflies to make friends with" and some of the children get excited about the idea. Miss Tara sits down with these children to help them organize all their questions, documenting their questions on the board in the classroom: What flowers do butterflies like? Where do butterflies sleep? Where are the butterflies right now? How do we get flowers? How do we take care of the flowers? How long until the flowers are big enough for the butterflies? Can we just buy butterflies at the pet store? Over the next few days, children participate in researching answers to their questions and creating a plan: calling a flower shop to find out how much it would cost for the flowers they would need, making a list of the tools they need to take care of the seeds, picking an area to plant the seeds, and, when the seeds arrive at the school, planting the seeds together. It will be quite a wait until the butterflies arrive in the garden, but because the children are so excited about the idea, the teachers encourage the children's interests and learning through materials and information. Using Montessori materials, children study the parts of a butterfly and parts of a flower. Then as a group, the children create a calendar that estimates when the flowers should be in bloom. Three children are interested in figuring out "How many sleeps" until the flowers are big, and that question leads to "how many minutes", and then "how many seconds". Miss Tara takes some time to work with them in a small group, determining how to solve the math problem of "how many seconds". The children create a butterfly garden-tending schedule, because "everyone has to take turns and help the garden grow!" The children now each have a turn every two weeks to water the garden and make notes in the Butterfly Garden Grow book. Marcus writes, with teacher help, "I watered the garden until the mud was extra muddy." Samuel draws a picture of what the sprouting buds look like when it is his morning to water the garden. Nina, focused on her butterflies writes "I will name them Daisy, Sarah, Butter, and Pinky. They will chase me and dance with me on the grass." As the flowers begin to grow, children study the flowers, drawing and painting pictures of the flowers as they grow. During art class, the children are shown Monet's paintings of gardens, and begin to explore similar techniques in their artwork. The teachers bring in materials to talk about the butterfly life cycle: storybooks like "the very hungry caterpillar" that encourage "story", and non-fiction books about the lifecycle of the butterfly. On a nature walk, children plan to look for caterpillars, discussing during circle where the caterpillars might live, and what to do when they find them. (Say Hello, pet it nicely, and take a picture, and name it. "The teachers will write out the names of each caterpillar and then we will make a caterpillar photo album, so when the butterflies come to our garden, we will have baby pictures to make them feel at home.") The children agree that this is a good idea, and also think that they should all have baby pictures at school. Parents are asked to send baby pictures to school, so the children can make a baby photo album for the library. One morning, Nina is very upset. "Where will the butterflies live??" she bursts out. "I forgot to make them somewhere to live, and they will never want to come play with us!" She quickly gets two friends to help her design a butterfly house. They draw out plans, and over the course of 5 days, begin to build a butterfly house. Other children watch them, and some begin to build houses for other animals that might visit the garden: baby birds, eagles, raccoons, bunnies and snails. The teachers note the interest in indigenous animals during their observations, and plan to bring in books about local animals to the classroom, to see if he children are interested in learning about local animals and their habits. The classroom begins to measure the flowers each day, and records how tall they are each day. This begins conversations around how tall each child is, and how much they grow each day. Some children begin to create a measuring wall, where they can show how tall each "kid, teacher, mummy and daddy" is. They decide to measure everyone using different measurements: centimetres, inches, and popsicle sticks. Marcus thinks popsicle sticks doesn't make sense, but he tells the teachers quietly, "Sarah is only 3 and I'm 4 and a half and so I know that popsicle sticks doesn't make sense. But I don't want to hurt her feelings, so I'll help her anyways. But everyone knows you measure things with centimetres and inches". The flowers are no longer growing quickly, and the children's interests begin to turn in other directions, and soon the butterflies are forgotten by the children...until Darius spots a butterfly in the yard. The children stop and watch the butterfly, and a teacher captures the animal on camera. The film is quickly printed, and the children decide that they aren't sure which caterpillar that they found earlier on their nature walk grew up to be the butterfly, so they vote on an adult name for the butterfly (Flutterfly), and retrieve the caterpillar pictures that were taken and put them outside, "In case Flutterfly recognizes herself". The teachers bring out the measurements that had been completed earlier, and children now re-measure the flowers, thrilled at how big they are compared to when the seeds were just planted. Soon pictures of Flutterfly begin to appear in artwork, and children remember all that they had studied about butterflies. The teachers document children's comments in the Butterfly Garden Grow book: "Look, see, the butterfly can't fly in a straight line. It's
because
it's ERATIC. That means it flies wherever it wants to when it
flies. Remember?" |