Nursery World - Enabling Environments: We've explored ... fire

A 'monster' sighting at one nursery sparked a project looking at a
range of themes.

When two-year-old Max from Reflections Nursery & Forest School in Worthing, West Sussex, looked into the outdoor stove and said, 'There's a monster in the fire', a six-month-long story project began, leading to the exploration of a number of interesting themes.

Reflections draws inspiration from the forest schools of Denmark and the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy. It runs an outdoor learning programme where five groups of children are taken out into the forest for 44 weeks of the year. It also has an atelier (art studio) and employs two full-time atelieristas (artists) and a pedagogical consultant, and the children regularly engage in long-term project work, usually inspired and led by their own ideas and interests.

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