Highlights of “Lights and Shadows” Parent-Child-Workshop

On October 16th, the high-demanding “Lights and Shadows” Workshop was held successfully at House of Knowledge Victoria Gardens Campus. The workshop invited the parents and the children to explore the wonderland of “Lights and Shadows” under the Reggio Emilia philosophy that House of Knowledge applies in its daily teaching approach.

Mr. Farshad Danicek, Reggio Emilia education expert and co-founder of House of Knowledge, led the workshop activity, and the children and parents were experiencing a fantasy wonderland of “Lights and Shadows” with the entire teaching team under a real-life Reggio setting.

In the Reggio settings at House of Knowledge, we start with a morning circle. Through singing a cheerful song relating to the Lights theme, our families gathered in a circle. With the startup of the workshop, the “Lights and Shadows” Theme Project was divided into three main stations for children to choose to participate based upon their own interest.

“Story-Telling Time” Station
Our first station was “Story-Telling Time” Station. Reading is encouraged at all times via  House of Knowledge education system, as reading can expand children’s vision, improve their knowledge, and can be a gift that accompanies children throughout their lifetime.  During the activity, the children not only got to explore the different shapes of the shadows, but also read a couple of very interesting Shadows related stories with teacher Teresa, such as “the Shadow Buddy”, “Who’s Shadow’s best friend?”; “Where is my shadow?”, as well as “Shadow and the Mirror”.

“Making The Light Show Its Different Colors!”  

In our second station the children got to practice their design thinking, fine motor skills, and all kinds of skills to create their own lanterns.

Drawing and picking their favorite shapes, using child-friendly scissors to cut the shapes, and making a lanterns with the parent’s help…Look! A pretty and lightened lantern is done! The children were super excited and engaged in making their own lanterns and this type of activity helped children to develop their creativity, inquiry, design thinking, as well as hand-crafts capability, which are all part of House of Knowledge’s Core Values when teachers apply the education approach in students’ daily life.

“Explore Lights and Shadows!”

The third station invited the children to explore all kinds of lights and shadows. How do I make the shadow bigger? Where suddenly did the shadow go? How fast can I follow the shadows? The children were all having so much fun in their “Shadows Wonderland”!

After exploring the various kinds of “Lights and Shadows” through our station activities, the families gathered back in a circle, and Farshad started to ask questions and led the children to open up their minds and think: What do you think is a shadow? Which color has it? Does is smell? Did anyone get to touch the shadow? What is light? What color is it? What form is it?

The incentive to encourage children to think actively, to raise questions, and to learn to learn by themselves, are all very critical in Reggio Emilia philosophy. Through opening up their minds and being creative, the children have come up with all different kinds of ideas and they actively shared what fun results they have seen and what they have gained in these activities.

Lastly, in order to help parents better understand what Reggio principles parents can use to support their children’s development at home, parents actively participated in the “Q&A” session when the workshop came to an end.

“Do not give children the answer directly. That will disable the children’s desire and curiosity to keep thinking and keep exploring” ; “In Early Years, getting answers right or wrong is not the most important thing; the more crucial thing to be aware of is, to help your child learn to learn, keep your child interested and curious, and get them to think independently and know the ways to explore answers”. Farshad has shared a lot of valuable tips when parents face the common phenomenon that children ask questions, and what parents should do or not do under the Reggio Emilia philosophy.

Through experiencing the real Reggio inspired classroom settings and the environment, participating families were extremely pleased with the workshop as both them and the children not only got to experience the true spirit behind the Reggio Emilia approach, but also they were inspired to adopt similar education methods at home which will complement the methods in practice and help strengthen communications between parents and the child.

As Mr. Farshad Danicek strengthened and summarized in the workshop, “The pathway to gain knowledge is much more important than giving children the answer directly”. Parents can offer all these examples with their children at home and allow them to encourage the combination of their curiosity and interest.

The “Shadows and Lights” Workshop has come to an end, but we will never stop exploring and being curious about the world around us. We hope that all participating families have gained lots of fun experience and joyful moments with their child at this workshop, and we look forward to seeing you in our upcoming events soon!

House of Knowledge Upcoming Events

1.Parent Seminar-“Language Workshop”

Date: October 30th (Saturday)

Time: 10AM – 11:30AM 

2.Parent Seminar-“Reggio Workshop” 

Date: November 20th (Saturday)

Time: 9:30AM – 11:30AM

RSVP: Please call or add WeChat: 15201801647 

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