Reggio Emilia - the child as an active participant (revisited)

In my last post about Reggio Emilia I came up with a plan on how to let Lachlan lead with in the lesson plans of Mother Goose Time.  Here was my plan: At the beginning of each week stick with the introduction theme and then from there let Lachlan choose which topic by having him choose the Day Bag for that day.

So for Week 4, Day 1 (Day Bag #16) we started with the Water Cycle.  He chose Drinking Water first (Day Bag #19), then Water Conservation (Day Bag #20).  Next he chose States of Water (Day Bag #18) and lastly Rainbow (Day Bag #17).

We were completely out of order and it didn't matter one bit.  Each day really can stand alone.  I feel like Lachlan was more invested in the topic of the day because he got too choose.  It wasn't dramatic but I did notice he was more excited to tell his Dad what we learned about at the end of the day.  The only reason it wasn't too dramatic is because Lachlan loves learning and so far none of the topics have been boring too him.  I mean seriously, to learn about States of Water we melted ice in a bowl with a hair dryer!  What kid would complain.

I do believe my plan of allowing choice with in the week is the best plan though.  I think moving around too much between the different weeks themes would be too confusing and you would lose the consistency of learning the letter or number that is being focused on for that week.

I am going to keep going with my little experiment, but I wanted to just give you a quick update on my findings so far.