Golden October | Experience A Reggio-Inspired Autumn Wonderland With Us!

The arrival of autumn always indicates that a most wonderful season has come. The blue sky, golden leaves, pleasant climate……everything turns out to be very beautiful during this season.

What are our children at House of Knowledge been doing lately? As Beijing’s very first school that introduced Reggio Emilia educational philosophy to Beijing 15 years ago, House of Knowledge has been the pioneer practitioner in applying the Reggio Emilia inspired environment to children’s daily campus life consistently.

We have well-designed our classrooms and activities, as well as have grabbed lots of education opportunities to apply a variety of teaching approaches to lead our children to touch, see, do, and to explore.

Today, let’s follow us and see what our children have been exploring and inquiring lately during this gold autumn season!

Feel the Harvest

Autumn is harvesting season.

During this season, many food items such as potatoes, corn, peanuts, and pumpkins have been harvested after their growth and cultivation and are popular on the food menus in China.

The link between nature and education is strong at House of Knowledge.

In order to help children get a better understanding and idea of food items in autumn, our teachers at House of Knowledge have prepared numerous dedicated and interesting activities-the children would be able to use all senses to feel and to explore, while gaining knowledge and practicing lots of skills comprehensively.

Today, in one of our class activities, our children had lots of fun painting on canvas; the teachers encouraged the children to open up their mind and draw “the beautiful tree from their eyes” by combining their actual knowledge of the autumn as well as their imagination to this season.

In German Class children even made their own tree out of their own recycled paper mache. Truly the circle of life.

In hands-on activities, the children used peanuts to make peanut butter. They loved the taste so much that some of the children suggested adding their homemade peanut butter to their breakfast waffles.

Furthermore, via peeling peanuts, shucking corn, and counting the food items correspondingly, the children got to practice their fine motor skills, cognitive skills, and math skills a lot, while also handling the food.

Meanwhile, the children also learned many other things about vegetables, how food grows and cultivates before they finally get harvested. By understanding and learning that it takes a long process and long period of time to cultivate, the children also got to learn and remember a truth that: everyone should cherish the food and it is not good to waste it.

Our older age group-the KG class children had even furthermore continue to explore about how the food is transported and gets digested so as to provide nutrition and energy for people in daily life.

Then the children identified the organs in the digestive system and they drew the outline of the human body. Through a variety of learning aspects and developmental fields, the knowledge aspects including geography, math, agriculture, and biology and all been incorporated into students’ knowledge exploration process.

Feel the Beauty of Nature

Inside the campus, the children turned the autumn into a sea of flowers.

Outside the campus, the field trip brings us a bigger classroom!

Our Nursery children had a fun field trip to Chaoyang Park. The children had lots of fun observing the leaves on trees, feeling the textures of different leaves and tree branches, as well as feeling the charm of the nature.

Through using all their senses to perceive, to think, and to explore, the children enjoyed their outdoor explorations so much and they cannot wait for their next field trip soon!

Use Lots of Open Materials

What is autumn?

To children, autumn can mean many things: the golden leaves, the big trees, the breeze, the harvest……and today, children at House of Knowledge have been learning about trees!

The children drew a big tree on the board and talked about the trunk, branches and the leaves. They then drew autumnal colored leaves onto the tree. The children also made their own trees using pipes and paint brushes.

In some of the morning learning stations, the children used double-sided tape and buttons to make an autumn colored tree and created still life drawings.

It was a very creative and inspiring activity and the children loved to use the autumn materials and colors to perform all different kinds of art expressions.

In early autumn, you also see a lot of Sunflowers.

Today, the children took some time observing the sunflowers and they enjoyed feeling the change between the yellow leaves and the green and brown.

They focused on the life cycle of the sunflower from seed to flower and all children were so concentrated and full of curiosity.

In project time of today’s class, the children all became little “Picassos”-they did the Picasso face project where they had to draw their face profiles and outline their heads to make abstract patterns around it.

The children liked this art project a lot, they taped the leaf suncatchers to the window and are waiting to see the beautiful Autumn colors reflecting through the window.

In the “decorating your pumpkins!” project session, the children got very creative.

Summary

A Reggio Emilia inspired wonderland has been such an amazing and interesting place for children to explore the wonderful autumn season.

As you can see, House of Knowledge provides lots of open materials for children to use, to spark their ideas, and to lead the children to open up their minds further and further.

Open materials can be present for children of different ages in Early Years to unlock the cognitive and creative mindset that allows them to build, deconstruct, persist, create, and work together to unleash the power of creativity.

The Theory of open materials, is the idea of loose materials and parts which can be moved around, designed and redesigned, and tinkered with; it creates infinitely more opportunities for creative engagement than static materials and environments.

Simon Nicholson once said: “In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it”.

This states that an environment which is rich in open-ended materials and natural materials invokes children to experiment, engage, construct and invent. It invites them to tinker, to manipulate and to play.

House of Knowledge is the place for all children to explore, to invoke the children to be thinkers, creators, and doers.

In this beautiful season of autumn, House of Knowledge continues to deliver an education provision and schooling experience that encapsulates creative thinking, cooperation, global mindset, and all our other core values to enable our children to experience more of their surroundings and the environment.

We look forward to sharing more campus updates with you in the near future and wish you all a very good start of the week!