From Primary Colors to Squirrels: How the Environment Shaped our Curiosity (Part 1)

The Reggio Emilia practice of the environment as the third teacher (parents and guardians being the first and the classroom teacher second) is a guiding standard in Nature Based Education (NBE).

The environment in which your child spends their time will inevitably shape who they become.

For the classroom, this means an environment that is set up at the child’s eye level, uncluttered, and open.

In the home, it means an environment that allows independence and fosters child interests.

Outdoors, it means an environment that promotes growth of native plants and materials, supports risky play and is inclusive with the surrounding community.

But how exactly do these things fit together to create optimal learning for a child?

The absorbent brain, as it has been coined by Maria Montessori (see how this all interconnects?), is the idea that from birth to age 3, the child will learn most from their environment through play (another methodology that NBE utilizes). While this method is most prevalent at this early age, the general principle never fades.

When children are ready to learn, they will learn. If they are not ready, then the learning process will become much more difficult (a leading problem in the traditional education methods often seen today).

When an environment is set up to allow exploration, children will gravitate to the things that interest them. Have you ever sat in a class that you were forced to take and had no interest in? How much did you really learn? For me, it was Philosophy 101. Taken as an elective to fill space, I struggled every day. You see, I had zero interest in the works of Aristotle and Voltaire. But 20 minutes later when I went into my Developmental Psychology class, I could tell you all you wanted to know about the theories of Vygotsky and Piaget. Because my heart wasn’t in it, the desire wasn’t there, I learned next to nothing (other than the fact that I hated philosophy). And to this day, the thing I remember most about that dreaded class was how dumb I felt and how much I hated it.

When your child is not ready to learn something and is then forced to do so, they are left feeling similar ways. Their desire to learn this information in the future dwindles.

So when I tell you that my students went from learning about primary colors and ended by learning about squirrels? I mean that I, as their teacher, created an environment that allowed for their natural exploration. I was no longer the center of where learning occurred. I was less a teacher and more a silent but active observer, providing them with the materials they needed to learn the things that they found interesting.

And it all started, technically, with a rock.