Here, you can find updates and draw inspiration from projects run in preschools. Key concepts include project-based learning, systematic quality work, and ideas inspired by the Reggio Emilia pedagogical philosophy, such as the environment as a third educator, the staging of materials and spaces, and the metaphor of the 100 languages, among others.
You can explore some of our projects related to sea animals, local wildlife, and space. Through storytelling and drama pedagogy, children experimented with various materials such as charcoal, crayons, chalk, watercolor, aquarelle, plaster, and clay.
Children and teachers were also introduced to artists like Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, and Yayoi Kusama along with various art techniques such as dripping or polka dots. You’ll find images of the pedagogical environments I set up before starting lessons with the children, as well as workshops designed for in-service preschool teachers.
Animals in our local environment
This year, 2024–2025, we have a project focusing on the animals in our local environment, with an emphasis on cats, inspired by the children’s interests. Mimmi is a mama cat with three kittens who often find themselves in trouble. Through drama, the children explore solutions to their problems, using this method to reflect on everyday dilemmas. With this project, we aim to foster empathy for nature and animals, as well as an understanding that humans live in an interconnected ecosystem with nature, where humans have obligations toward nature, and animals have rights.
Through this project, we invite children to experiment with different artistic forms, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, and materials like clay, plaster, recyclable materials and salt dough, as well as techniques like origami. We also invite them to meet the art work of different artists.
Mimmi (a mama cat puppet) visits a store called the Gallery. She wants to buy paintings of cats to decorate her house. The children follow Mimmi and her three kittens to the Gallery, where they encounter Picasso’s cat paintings, along with other painters’ artworks. The children discuss the colours and shapes of the paintings. Afterward, they create their own art, inspired by Picasso, through various drawing and painting techniques. The following day, they make their own cats out of salt dough, creating cats that could also be found in a gallery.
Sea Animals
Space
Trees and Leaves
Workshops
These workshops introduced educators to different aquarelle painting techniques, including liquid aquarelle (flytande akvarell), blocks, aquarelle pencils, and crayons. Additionally, they explored the work of Frida Kahlo, portrait painting, and digital tools such as Makey Makey, Webb-ägg, and thermal cameras.
Pedagogical Environments
