Let Me Learn Everywhere

Aperçu:

We are a Reggio Emilia inspired elementary school that focuses on educating children ages 3 to 7 in our community. It is an approach that is based on the principles of respect, responsibility and community through exploration and discovery. Children learn best through touching, moving, listening, seeing and having endless ways of expressing themselves. The environment is crucial in early childhood development and is an extraordinary teacher. So many of the activities that children are involved in today are structured, indoors and consistent. Outdoor time is reserved for play instead of learning. The Reggio Emilia approach provides an attractive, child focused, creative and welcoming environment that inspires learning and imagination; tools that are critical to create interested and excited learners. Imagine learning in an environment that included the warmth of sunshine on your face, a gentle breeze ruffling your hair, looking up and seeing a sky of blue with clouds floating by or a carpet of green that upon closer inspection holds a whole new world of scurrying creatures. It is this environment that we want to create for our earliest learners. We want them to learn about and embrace all that nature offers us. We want them to learn through creating outdoor centres that focus on the earth and our environment. We want them to learn about respecting the earth by recycling items like tree cookies, tree branches, logs and stumps. We want them to learn about light, shadow and movement where it happens best, under the sky, watching a butterfly, or an ant, or a beetle or by seeing a cloud overhead as it passes in front of the sun. What better way to inspire a child to learn than by letting nature be their best teacher. We are a unique school in that we are focused entirely on the most impressionable learners, the youngest ones and we get to teach them first. We want them to enjoy, create, explore, inquire, question and reason. We set the stage for their future love of learning and we want to do it right. We are a school with a play area that needs to be entirely redone and one that wants to create outdoor learning centres. We want to create an ideal natural space that includes planting trees, shrubs and flowers with benches and pathways. We want to create spaces where children can sit on, under or in. Areas that have different levels, nooks and crannies so that kids can imagine to their hearts content. We are also a school that has a community around us that uses our playground once the school day is done. We have condominiums and apartments with limited outdoor areas that utilize our play space. We want to be able to provide a wonderful environment for everyone in our community to benefit and to learn from. We want anyone to walk into our play area and be inspired to connect with their environment and with each other. We want to motivate children to learn, wonder, explore and create. We are a great school that wants to be greater. We are small and that makes us unique but it makes raising money challenging because we are so limited. But we don't want that to stand in our way of achieving all that could be in our play area. That is why we are hoping the Aviva Community Fund can help us with our dream of creating an inspired play and learning centre that can be enjoyed by everyone in our community. Help our children and our community "learn everywhere".