The Loris Malaguzzi International Centre Centro Internazionalle Loris Mallaguzzy

The highlight of my trip was to visit the Loris Mallaguzzy International Centre, which promotes the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood development that we have been implementing at my children's center in San Francisco. I had the opportunity to meet Sara Ferrari who works in the center. She gave a me a tour of the exhibition and explained to me the history of the centro and the different activities that take place here. The exhibition reflects the beautiful work that the children, the teachers, the atelierista, and the community do in the city of Reggio Emilia. The atelierista works together with the teacher to prepare activities that invites children to discover or expand on their knowledge.

The Reggio Emilia approach emphasizes the interests of the children by developing a curriculum from observing the children and reflecting and analyzing the documentation based on the observations. This approach emphasizes children's creativity.

The exhibition begins with a display tracing attitudes towards children and the different stages of educational programs for children in Italy and offered by the city of Reggio Emilia from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the present. The exhibit puts this in historical context interspacing world events of interest with the historical progression of Italy and the city of Reggio Emilia.

I was astonished to see an exhibition of the Movement and Time Project that they are showing and that we have worked on in our children's center. I love the comments of the children and admire the community participation involved.

I was also very impressed with the light room designed to provoke the children's imagination to encourage them to explore. This room was created by an architect hired by the city with the cooperation of the atelerista, the teacher and the community. The atelerista is a specialist, usually an artist of some kind, who works together with the teacher, the children and the community. This a Meta Project that the atelierista is working on with children ages one to 19 years old. Here children have the opportunity to explore and discover light. The ateliarista has set up a room with many different colors of light and different shapes. The minute one walks through the tunnel the soft lights give one a calm sensation; there is vibration and sensation about the light and the soft colors that makes one feel relaxed. Next, there are four small tables with different kinds of mirrors, and there are three different colors that the children can work with and discover light in different dimensions. In this area the children can discover what happens when they put together different colors such as combining green and yellow to make a reflection of blue light. On another table there are three clear containers with water and three big lights hanging from the ceiling which reflect into the water creating white bins of light. The dark room has phosphorecent soft lights, purple and white, and mirrors. At the end of the exhibitions there are strips of colored paper to draw on the desk; there were bright colors with sparkles and other materials that reflect light for the children to construct different kinds of things. Unfortunally, taking pictures inside the center is not allow, so I have only posted a few pictures of the city and outside of the center.


I want to mention that the director of my children center, Zaida Rodriguez, who recently passed away was responsible for implementing the Reggio Emilia Appoach curriculum in our center. Zaida was dedicated to providing high quality Early Childhood Education for the children. She was always trying to find money available to provide professional development workshops for the staff at our children center to enchance the teachers knowledge. We will miss her dearly.