The Project Approach

The traditions of school-age care are still in practice today. School-age programs invite children to participate in crafts and education-based activities. Most school-age programs aim to entertain the children, learn, and have fun. School-age programs are excellent institutions offering children fun and happiness during out-of-school time.

At the beginning of my career in school-age care, educators created all the activities for the children. We offered children new theme-based daily activities related to the time of the year, seasons, and holidays. Children enjoy making crafts and playing outdoor games. As educators planned for each succeeding year, we repeated popular activities and sprinkled in some new activities to break up the monotony.

Then halfway through my career, I learned about the project approach during professional development training. I learned more about the project approach from colleagues at a new job. I want to share the evolution of our experience with the project approach. Researching "Project Approach," I found many variations of the actual practice.

How did we use the project approach at the beginning of our journey into child-directed learning? What does our process look like fifteen years later?

Our journey with the project approach started simply. As educators, we would learn the interests of the children and then plan activities for children based on their interests. At the beginning of our exploration of project work, there was not much improvisation. Much of the children's work looked similar, and our project work was a process instead of an exploration.

As educators, we evolved our practice, and projects evolved into in-depth studies. When children expressed an interest in a specific subject, educators asked the children what types of projects they would like to try and explore the topic further. The difference from our first attempt at the project approach is the children generated the project ideas, and educators only helped start the initial project. From that day forward, children and educators worked together on long-term projects, and our collaborative creations became quite elaborate.

The next iteration of our work came from a desire to have children take more of a lead in our investigations. We wanted educators to work alongside the children in different roles and become observers, mentors, and co-learners. During this iteration, children would have questions or a desire to explore certain materials or concepts. Instead of facilitating the work, educators talked with the children and searched for answers together. Our new approach may sound like the second iteration, but the big difference is that the further investigations evolved slower. The project work generated from our recent experiments was more detailed and thought-provoking and is how our first attempts at documentation started. We started displaying the children's work as the learning journey developed and sparked our evolution of the project approach.

What did we learn from this experience that may benefit your learning community?

Many schools in Reggio Emilia and around the world inspire us. Our journey is representative of the people and place where it happened. The following is what influenced the evolution of our work.

Today, we live in all three stages of evolution in our teaching practice. Our work with the children most often resembles the last iteration. As educators, we find ourselves using all three models of programming mentioned above to meet the needs of the children in our care. Our program features a wide variety of age ranges. We have new and more experienced parents in our program. We use many methods of teaching to bring the learning community forward. We work with parents to develop a place of shared values and processes of learning.

Most projects we collaborate on come from the children's questions, likes, and ideas. Some of our collaborative work features new investigations. Other work develops from ideas children have seen and want to replicate, like the Slime craze of last year. The fundamental goal for our work is to have the children lead the work. It does not matter if it is a process art project or an in-depth question.

All projects have an undetermined shelf life and some end before they get started. Other projects last a long time. Some projects have lasted the entire school year and carried over into the beginning of the following year. It is up to the children how long we work and investigate an idea. Many projects evolve in spurts. The children often revisit work.

All work with the children originates in play. Play is the foundation of what we do. All our work together develops through play. The children are with us to take a break from school. Projects and the search for answers are secondary. That is the true nature of our work in school-age care. Project work comes and goes. Often, the children use their time to play with each other. They work with materials, play games, read, and draw. Sprinkled into this mix is time for investigations and deep thinking. Project work takes place when the children are ready.

As educators, we are ready when the children are to help them explore questions and work on projects together in the search for answers.

What is the evolution of your work with children?