The Little School - Helping foster a healthy childhood of wonder and learning
Foundations for Learning
The Little School strives to incorporate these Reggio Emilia inspired ideas: 
 
  • The Image of the Child: all children have potential, construct their own learning, and are capable and competent.
 
  • Community: children, family, teachers, parents, and community work together for the children’s benefit.
 
  • Environment: school and classrooms are beautiful places, encouraging respect of others and the environment.
 
  • Collaboration: teachers as teams and partners, working together and sharing information to facilitate children’s learning.
 
  • Time Management: Respect for child's pace. Children stay with teachers for several years to build relationships and consistency. The daily schedule is a “flow” rather than a to-the-minute time schedule.
 
  • Emergent Curriculum/Projects:  Curriculum is child-teacher negotiated, following their interests, and long or short-term projects of particular interest to a group of children.
 
  • Environmental Stimulation: Encourages activity, involvement and discovery.
 
  • Documentation: Observing and recording each child’s ideas in order to plan; and “making learning visible” to all.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
        We are influenced by the amazing schools in Reggio Emilia, a town in Northern Italy.  After WWII, parents in this small town built schools where children could acquire skills of critical thinking and collaboration--essential to rebuilding and ensuring a democratic society. These municipal preschools are now considered to be the best in the world.  
 
We are enthused and inspired by these ideas. We see the child as capable and competent. We collaborate with each other daily to discover the children’s interests so that we might provoke their continued learning. We look to social-constructivist theory, which includes emergent (negotiated) curriculum.  We stay abreast of current information on what early childhood professionals in Italy, the United States and around the world are doing and speaking about, as well as advances in brain research and new ideas in “thinking about children’s thinking” to guide our vision.  We collaborate frequently with our colleagues in the field to discuss developmentally appropriate practice and to problem solve.
 
 We have many resources on the theories of social-constructivist theory and the schools in Italy if you would like more information.   Also, see "links"