Tuesday, The Hundred Languages of Children

At Green Sprout we are influenced by the Reggio Emilia approach. Part of this philosophy is that children have a hundred languages. The aim of the Reggio Approach is to promote children’s education through the development of all their languages: expressive, communicative, symbolic, cognitive, ethical, metaphorical, logical, imaginative and relational. As teachers. co-learners and observers of children's work we see the use of such languages every day here in the infant room. We encourage you to think of the hundred languages concept as you make observations of your child. Please enjoy the photos from today and the famously beautiful poem by Loris Malaguzzi the founder of the Reggio Emilia philosophy.

The Hundred Languages of Childhood The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
A hundred languages
A hundred hands
A hundred thoughts
A hundred ways of thinking
Of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
Ways of listening of marveling of loving
A hundred joys
For singing and understanding
A hundred worlds
To discover
A hundred worlds
To invent
A hundred worlds
To dream
The child has
A hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
But they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
Separate the head from the body.
They tell the child;
To think without hands
To do without head
To listen and not to speak
To understand without joy
To love and to marvel
Only at Easter and Christmas
They tell the child:
To discover the world already there
And of the hundred
They steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
That work and play
Reality and fantasy
Science and imagination
Sky and earth
Reason and dream
Are things
That do not belong together
And thus they tell the child
That the hundred is not there
The child says: NO WAY the hundred is there--

Loris Malaguzzi
Founder of the Reggio Approach