Here & There, On Our Way

Reggio, Italy. Glimpses into the art on display through out the building. Color, color and more color. All sorts of media. All types of process-art. All manner of exploration. All child friendly. All inspiring. All delightfully displayed.  

WOW: Window Wonders!!

 

 

 

Reggio, Italy. These paintings are displayed on the windows at the level of the children's eyes. You can see glimpses of the playground beyond. The bright day outside detracts from some of the brightness of the actual paintings, but I think you get at least the flavor of the paintings. I was so delighted to see such amazing detail in the children's work!!

Take a close look at that skirt pictured just above! Look at the amazing and intricate design. Elaborate. Thoughtful. Could be the next Italian fashion designer!!!!

Atelier: Reggio

Bits and pieces. Fluff and fancy. Fine motor and color. Shapes and shimmy. Happy and bright!!

My Reggio Audience

My minutes to tour the Reggio center were so limited, because just about as soon as I walked into their building, it was nearly time for my performance with the big kids!!! Thank goodness we got ourselves 'found' in the nick of time. That first picture shows my two Vicenza native-Italian-speaking 'translators' who are standing at the ready, for when my charades need some sort of explanation for the children...... for the most part, in fact the vast majority of our time together, they happily followed along, doing whatever I demonstrated!!! My nonsense act with my floogle woogle buggle needed no translation what-so-ever. Humor translates across the cultures, around the world. I understood their laughter and they understood my nonsense. Wave your hands over your head hardly needs translation either. Smiles? They come in all sizes and all languages. Which just goes to show you -- language is no barrier between children & performer, when music & movement are at the heart of the time together. "Everybody, all together, now!!" Grazie!!!! Prego!!!!

My two words of Italian used most frequently?? Grazie: thank you. Prego: you're welcome. Actually the word 'prego' seemed used in all sorts of formats, as in 'prego' you're welcome to give me your gelatto order now, you're welcome to begin. I will never look at a jar of Prego spaghetti sauce in the same way again. The word came in handy for all sorts of interactions.

Art Materials in Reggio

REGGIO, EMILIA: ITALY!!!!!!!!! Does it seem to anyone else that my life is one big rainbow?? Honest-to-goodness, I am always searching for the bright rainbows that are indeed-within-reach. Getting to tour in Reggio, Italy! Getting to PERFORM for Italian children in Italy!! As a former elementary school art teacher, it doesn't get much better than this!!! Honest. Just as soon as I realized that my tour to Italy was coming together for Month-of-the-Military Child, I starting planning how we could see some 'reggio' in action.

To have Arlana, my amazing "agent" orchestrate a day's tour for her staff, in barter for my performing for the Italian children & teachers was the greatest idea possible. Spoiler alert!!!! Let me warn you that the only way you get a rainbow is to have some rain, some storms and that sunny disposition -- all rolled into one.

In my very brief moments available for observation and documenting it was obvious that everywhere I turned there were shelves & shelves of available art materials. I loved the center that had the dual-painting stations with the handy dispensers of rolled paper. Seeing an easel with a '10-banger' tray for paint cups just gave me all sorts of inspiration...... and the Pasta Rainbow just made me smile! After being seperated during our 'crack-the-whip' like journey across Reggio and then to be united at the last possible moment..... let's just saw it was the roller coaster ride of our whole European adventure. Yet in the end there was a rainbow, and you can see that evidence for yourself.

Needless to say, I long for an opportunity to return!!! Arlana, are you listening?

[Here's the whole chronicle of all of my posts related to our day in Reggio.]

Landscape Painting Vista in Reggio Italy!

Reggio Emilia, Italy: Two LARGE toddler paintings merged into one mural landscape!

Reggio 'documentation' of the process-within-the-product!

Reggio, Italy: Toddler 'feet' painting process documented in photographs

Toddler friends, painting with their feet in Reggio Italy

REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY!!!  
Here I am as my tour of the building continues in yet another toddler classroom space in the new national childcare center in Reggio. Their mural creating a "landscape window scene" is documented in photographs again. This time, two different sensory painting experiences have been spliced into one final product-display for their bulletin board. The 'blue' painting was created with chubby little fingers and the paint as media to be explored. Notice that the toddlers are 'standing' to paint their blue finger exploration with the paper affixed to the wall.  


The 'green' painting is created with wobblie-wittle feeties walking thru the paint (paper placed easily on the floor.) Then the teachers have merged the two experiences into one final communal finished product: the landscape vista above, complete with window tissue paper curtains, pulled back with curtain tie-backs. Cute.

I LUV the way the photographs are merged together with the completed mural!
The perfect connection between process and product. The photos interspersed with the art are seamlessly woven in -- for even the casual observer, days or weeks later. Parents and tourists alike can appreciate the fun + energy that was the original creation. Click here to see all of my blog-posts from my amazing day in Reggio, Italy.

This post has been added to a Sensory Play over at Teach Preschool.




I'm THRILLED to add this post to the first ever(!!) linkie party at PreK+K Sharing on the topic of PAINTING. Click on the button to go back to all of those amazing ideas.

Laboratory for the Senses

Dateline: Reggio Emilia, ITALY!!!!
In case you're 'finding' this post all by itself, thru Pinterest, or a google search, or perhaps because it's in my top-10 post list, or maybe due to Deborah Stewart's linkie party, I'll give you just a little bit of background on me: music-lady, author + illustrator woman. Invited to Italy (and Germany) to work with the children of our deployed US Army personnel on 4 of our Army bases. Invited abroad to introduce my nationally award winning picture book, "Red, White and Blue."

The Italian province of Reggio Emilia is very near our base at Vicenza. Bingo-bango, zingo-zango!! We just added a day to my tour of "Month of the Young Military Child" to tour and perform for the Italian children in Reggio. Be still my heart!!!!



Of course that sounds absolutely brilliant, right?? The only hitch in this Disney-like-princess story, is that the morning of our tour, we got separated from the HUGE van carrying our hosting organization of 16 Early Childhood educators. And I mean desperately LOST, in Reggio, in Italy -- without a word of Italian besides 'prego' (you're welcome.) Thru a hilarious, slap-stick amount of effort and charades and a hand-drawn map by an elderly woman -- we were eventually reunited with our fellow touring educators.... hours late. So I missed the official tour of the center & arrived just a few heart beats ahead of my own performing for the Italian children. So now you know 'the rest-of-the-story.'

In my hastily jiffed together, thank-goodness you're here, personal tour, which followed the staff's official tour of the brand-new-center I was able to spend a couple of minutes in a rather large room devoted to sensory exploration. My Italian interpreter translated it for me as the "Laboratory for the Senses." [Sure wish there had been enough time to have written down the Italian label, but I was doing well to remember to snap up some photos in the scant couple of moments available.]

We entered the space thru colorful blue streamers floating effortlessly from the ceiling into a subdivision of the space which had suspended/hanging apparatus for children to explore. Tambourines to bump and jangle, car hubcaps to pound upon, kitchen utensils that were interchangeable for touching and fluffing and swooping and dinging and clanging and experimenting and chosen for their feedback-giving & receiving possibilities.

I can imagine the sheer delight for a young child to regularly have such a space to discover just how things work, how they interact, what sounds they make, what they feel like. There would indeed be much sensory stimulation and joy in a lab of this design and insight.

LOVED it! LOVED IT!! LOVED IT!!
 [Click here for all of the related posts on my day in Reggio.]

This post has been added to a link-up over at Teach Preschool on sensory play, spend some time popping around to see all of the other amazing ideas in the blog hop by clicking below on the hand-print image.