Morning Explorations
We are now over three months into the school year and it is wonderful to notice how many of the children bound into the classroom with much energy and curiosity, eager to start the most precious time of the day, Free Exploration. Through their explorations of the environment and the materials the children’s research and thinking become richer, interweaving the experiences they have. Through the projects and challenges that the children embark on we observe an interweaving of thought, planning and action. There is a pleasure in the work from sustained thinking and an attention to possibilities and new lines of investigation. Children are able to greet their friends and have conversations to set the tone for the day and to discuss multiple ideas to explore. Relationships are deepened, children collaborate, negotiate, coming to understand one another. Free Exploration is a truly invaluable part of the day.
We are reminded by the words of Tiziana Filippini (2008)
“Our times are dominated by ideas of knowledge as linear development and strong trends for accelerating children’s learning. Instead children’s strategies for thinking and acting, their extraordinarily divergent sense of invention, invite us to remark just how much and in what ways creativity, play, expression and aesthetic sense together with the times and rhythms of reflection and knowledge, are capable of combining and transforming, of emotion and analysis, empathy and connection. They are a vital, a structuring part of the educational process.”
When you cross the threshold of the E2 classroom with your children every morning, maybe you also feel the warmth of the relationships and the hum of learning that we are privileged to be a part of every day.
November 27th, 2011 at 15:19
This is the magic of the ELC that has touched all 3 of my kids…explorations. For all 3 of my children’s experiences at the ELC those moments of free exploration really have allowed them to tap into the essence of who they are. Once that is tapped into…well the world opens up so much bigger and richer and wider.