It will allow us to explore new curriculum methods which underlie a bountiful harvest of children's creative and cognitive expression. The Reggio system began over thirty years ago in the city of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy. The city has become recognized world-wide for the excellent system of early childhood education open to all families with children under six years of age. The basic premise of the Reggio Approach is a shared and deep belief in the strength of children's potential for learning, exploring, and entering into relationships with their peers, teachers, and environment. Inherent in the premise is the expectation that children make hypotheses and discover connections and meanings among things and events of their daily lives.
Children have many languages for expressing and communicating.
The Reggio Approach helps to provide the creative freedom for children to fully represent their ideas and to develop their thinking. One of the focuses in the Reggio system is the use of art. In the Reggio Approach, art is inseparable from the rest of the curriculum, and in fact, is central to the educational process as a form of both exploration and expression. The JCC's Early Childhood Department is excited to announce that we received a grant from the Rachel B. Banks Youth Fund that will help us to implement the Reggio Approach in our school. The position of Art teacher will be added for the 1998 - 1999 school year.