Loris Malaguzzi’s much-quoted poem 100 Languages starts, ‘The child is made of one hundred. The child has a hundred languages, a hundred hands, a hundred thoughts, a hundred ways of thinking of playing, of speaking.’ The forms these ‘languages’ can take are endless: dancing, dreaming, questioning, singing, reasoning, imagining, exploring, painting, sculpting and experimenting.
The educational philosophy forms the bedrock of the Reggio Emilia approach, founded by Malaguzzi in 1963 when the first municipal pre-school opened in the region of Reggio Emilia, a small wealthy city in northern Italy, where he grew up.
Today, there are about 70 pre-schools and infant-toddler centres in the city of Reggio Emilia which form a network of schools operated by the local authority and Reggio Children, the international centre. The schools are world-renowned and receive over 4,000 visitors on study tour each year.
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