Our Reggio Emilia inspired program guides children to wonder, explore, investigate, and create. In this approach, children are the center of their own learning and the initiators of the process. Our pod school fosters relationships, which are a vital component of early learning and development. In our program, activities are structured around developing relationships so that the children have an opportunity to interact with one another. Establishing relationships provides security, happiness, a sense of confidence and well-being, and thus is the foundation of learning. In our pod school, we promote self-expression in as many ways as possible. Besides verbal and written communication, there is also drawing, painting, building, sculpting, imaginative play, and projects.

Teachers are partners, nurturers and guides to children. Teachers work with parents in these magical years to help children explore their interests through projects and play. Our teachers focus on experiences for children to discover, and guide them through problem solving. Reggio Emilia teachers observe the children whilst also questioning and waiting for opportunities to encourage further exploration of their interests. In addition to guiding children through their learning, teachers are responsible for documenting the learning process and transcribing the language used by children. This is done through photos and videos, and shared with parents through our app Brightwheel, to keep them in the know of what the child is doing.

Our philosophy follows four set principles that focuses on the child’s natural development. Our principles are:

1) Children guide their own learning.

2) Children engage with their senses to help fully process information.

3) Children are encouraged to interact with their peers and develop relationships. They are encouraged to explore the world around them through natural materials.

4) Children are encouraged to express themselves and be given infinite opportunities to do so.

Make-believe play provides new tools for thinking.

Furthermore, even when make-believe turns fanciful, the physical and psychological rules governing fantastic worlds usually mirror the physical and psychological rules governing the real world, again pointing out that make-believe is about re-presenting and reflecting on reality (Harris, 2000). Dragons and superheroes may fly, but they do so because the conditions (wings) and motives (to fight bad guys) are not altogether different from those in the real world.

As a tool for understanding reality, make-believe play also serves to digest information. Once again, take dinosaur play as an example. Many pre-schoolers become dinosaur experts by gathering information about dinosaurs from books, museums, and films. However, this information needs digesting. For that to happen, preschoolers play by having plastic brontosauruses eat leaves, drawing stegosauruses with those wonderful bony plates marching down their backs, and by having everyone flee before them when they pretend to be Tyrannosaurus rex. This idea about play functioning to digest information has been most closely associated with the work of Jean Piaget (Piaget, 1951), who emphasized that children often play with that which they have recently acquired.

The main thinking tool developed by make-believe play is that of symbolizing. Where would we all be without the ability to symbolize and re-present reality? Without this ability, life would be like a waking dream in which events simply happen and pass on without a moment’s reflection.

As symbolic ability develops, thought is freed from perception and objects take on meanings that are not determined by their physical properties. We see this especially in children’s make-believe. As Vygotsky pointed out, when a child uses a stick to stand for a horse, it isn’t the stick itself that matters, but the meaning the child gives to it, the meaning that defines the stick as a horse (Vygotsky, 1976b).

To illustrate the significance of this playing with meaning, Vygotsky cited the example of two sisters playing at being sisters. They did so by holding hands and dressing alike, actions they almost never performed in reality. However, by acting as they did, these sisters played with the meaning of being sisters, namely, that sisters are closer to and more alike to one another than are nonsisters.