Interactive Encounters: The Forest through the Lens of 100 Languages - Inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach. 

Dr. Diane Kashin, RECE and Rosalba Bortolotti, RECE

What does the forest offer? Join us at Lake St. George located on a 120-hectare site on the ecologically significant Oak Ridges Moraine, just east of Bayview Avenue in Richmond Hill. This site which has a beautiful kettle lake is the headwaters of the east branch of the Humber River. It features mixed woodlands, open meadows, reforested areas, wetlands that possess abundant fish and wildlife populations. Lake St. George also offers a “Bush Early Learning Centre” where you will gather to explore invitations set up in the forest that will invite thinking deeply about Reggio-inspired practice in your own contexts. Framing our day will be the four foundations of learning from How Does Learning Happen? Ontario’s Pedagogy for the Early Years – well-being, engagement, belonging and expression. We will consider these and how they connect to learning in the forest. All proceeds from this day will go to the Land as First Teacher Fund designed to make conservation lands accessible to urban Indigenous children and their families by helping with transportation costs, honorariums for Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and other material costs that support Land-based Indigenous Education

Agenda:

8:30 to 9:00                 Breakfast 

9:00 to 9:30                 What is the sound of the Land? The pedagogy of listening

9:30 to 10:00               Introduction to the Reggio Emilia Approach 

10:00 to 10:15             Refreshments and break

10:15 to 11:15             Exploring invitations in the forest

11:15 to 12:00             Finding treasures in the forest

12:00 to 12:30             Co-creating art from the Land – Giving back to the Land

12:30 to 1:00               Closing circle around the fire

Purchase Tickets: 

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/interactive-encounters-tickets-91791200953