Many parents in the Colorado Springs area know that Creekside Kids follows the Reggio Emilia philosophy of child education. Our center is Reggio Emila-influenced, not purely 100% Reggio Emilia, because no center/school outside of Reggio Emilia, Italy, is allowed to call itself “a Reggio Emilia school.” We believe it’s one of the best approaches for educating young children for many reasons. And we’d love to explain why it matters to us that a new generation of kids is learning in this way.

 

If you’ve never heard the story before, Reggio Emilia is a small town in Italy. After World War II, as Italy was restructuring its educational system, a psychologist and parents in the area banded together. They were determined to find a new way of teaching their children. 

 

Instead of testing children against the preconceptions of what they need to be for the sake of their parents and adult society, those pioneers began to consider that no one needs to be the winner and the loser in education. The essential factor is to approach all children with the idea that they are capable, creative, curious, and competent. Instead of paring down children from best to worst, Reggio Emilia-style education accepts and includes all children. It begins with the idea that each child has unlimited potential and fosters that potential, letting the child indicate where they might go next.

 

This might sound like a daunting undertaking, but it’s actually relatively simple. It’s about adults listening to and learning from children as the adult uses many methods and the environment to provoke curiosity. Adults and children interact in this way to impart lessons and spark connections and growth in a young child’s mind. Reggio Emilia-inspired interaction leads to hands-on, child-led experiences in which the adults assist and gently guide the children to verbalize their thoughts and discuss their understanding of the world. This is a hallmark of Reggio Emilia-inspired lessons. It understands that children are already trying to communicate their ideas to us in one hundred ways, but they do not yet know the way that traditional education wants them to communicate. 

 

Reggio-style education means not considering an answer wrong because it doesn’t work on adult logic. We are delving into children’s intellect through Socratic questioning, observation, and provocation to discover how we can partner with each child to see how we can better open their minds to ideas instead of spoon-feeding them the answers.

At Creekside Kids, we do our best to put this practice in place with every child. If you’d like to discuss a place at Creekside Kids for your kids, we’d like to invite you to click this embedded link to schedule an appointment. Let’s get to know each other! We’re located at 1201 W Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80906, and we can be reached at (719) 635-9111. Our regular hours of operation are 6:30 am until 5:45 pm, Monday through Friday; however, we have a shortened schedule during COVID of 7:00 am to 5:30 pm.