Reflections Nursery & Forest School in Worthing is launching a research and development consultancy service to share its theory and methods with other nurseries.
As well as being a Forest School, Reflections also incorporates the Reggio Emilia approach in much of its activities and education.
Long-term project work led by the children and their imaginations is a key element of the nursery’s practice. This is facilitated by an in-house art studio and the employment of two full-time artists – the atelierista and the ateliers from the Reggio Emilia philosophy.
Director of Reflections Martin Pace said, ‘The question we are asked most often at our professional development days is, "do we offer a consultancy service to visit and support other nurseries?" People are interested in environments and materials, long-term project work and documentation, essentially in children’s ideas and how to respond to them.
‘There are a number of early years settings in the UK and abroad who are working in a similar way to us and are at different stages of their journey and we are delighted to offer a service to support other educators who want to deepen their approach.’
Deb Wilenski, who has been the pedagogical lead with Reflections since 2014, will be leading the consultancy work, backed up by senior educators and artists with many years of experience working at the nursery.
Ms Wilenski is a key support to educators at the nursery and also the main documenter of recent projects.
The three areas of professional development that will be covered for early years settings are:
- Environments and Materials: addressing the large scale set-up of rooms and spaces to the smallest detail of one material rather than another;
- Developing Projects: looking at how to work with ‘children’s own fascinations’ to build long-term enquires and investigations;
- and Documenting & Publishing: how to use documentation as part of project building, and the many ways of sharing work with families, colleagues and other educators.
‘Of course we will still be working with all these questions at Reflections too, and still will be in another ten years’ time. But we believe exchanges between different settings can be a great way to explore and search for answers,’ said Ms Wilenski.
The nursery has recently published a new book on its use of ‘storying’ entitled The Revolutionary Baby, and is also running a local exhibition of the children’s work in St Paul’s Exhibition Centre in Worthing later in the year.