#hundred languages

Our first workshop this morning was “Loose Parts: Inspiring Play, Supporting Inquiry.” This workshop was designed to offer Wild Lilac’s teachers the opportunity to consider the role that open-ended materials play in supporting children’s learning. We began by thinking and talking about our recent observations; this is key, as our intention to offer curriculum that is meaningful, connected---authentic---is first and always rooted in our observations of children’s play and relationships. 

“Can you think of a moment this week where a child or children were engaged with open-ended materials?”

“What was the material? Did they use it in a surprising or unexpected way? What was their play like, and why do you think this experience stands out as significant when reflecting on the week?”

After sharing these stories with colleagues, teachers broke out into their teams and created an inventory of all of the materials readily available---that can be accessed independently, at all times---to children in their classrooms. Then, individually, teachers chose one material that has proven to be strongly supportive of children’s open-ended play. They went deeper by sharing examples of the types of play those materials have supported. We reconvened to look for patterns and connections across classrooms and age ranges. 

In our play-based curriculum, what is the relationship between the “theory of loose parts” and the concept of “the hundred languages” of children?

In 1972, an architect named Simon Nicholson first used the phrase “loose parts” to describe materials which can be moved around, designed and redesigned, and tinkered with---materials filled with possibility, that invite children to shape their use and purpose according to their imaginations. He posited that “in any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.” In other words, open-ended materials provoke and support children’s creative play in far richer and deeper ways than static materials or environments do. If our research-based understanding is that children learn most effectively through direct experience, we must be intentional about what is in children’s hands and not take for granted that a “hands-on” approach alone is enough. 

Loris Malaguzzi was the central founder of Reggio Emilia’s educational philosophy, creating and building Reggio Emilia’s network of municipal preschools and infant-toddler centers from the ruins of post-World War II Italy. Malaguzzi’s contributions to the field of early childhood education are myriad and diverse, but one of the best-known aspects of Reggio philosophy is his concept of the hundred languages of children. His is an image of the child that seeks to recognize, honor, and give value to the potential of all children. There is an important thread to draw here to Nicholson who begins “The Theory of Loose Parts” by critiquing the view perpetuated by popular culture and public education that “creativity is for the gifted few.” Just as, for Malaguzzi, all children have the right to a childhood where their vast capabilities are recognized and honored, all people have the right to actively participate in co-creating the world we live in together. 

The hundred languages is a belief that children use many, many ways to show and develop their understanding of the world, to express their thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Consider: music, movement, sculpture, drawing, dramatic play, and so much more---each one of these hundred languages must be valued and nurtured. They are approaches to learning, and ways of knowing. And, for young children, they all take place in the context of play. 

The Hundred Languages

No way. The hundred is there.

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.

A hundred always a hundred ways of listening of marveling, of loving a hundred joys for singing and understanding a hundred worlds to discover a hundred worlds to invent a hundred worlds to dream.

The child has a hundred languages (and a hundred hundred hundred more) but they steal ninety-nine. The school and the culture separate the head from the body. They tell the child: to think without hands to do without head to listen and not to speak to understand without joy to love and to marvel only at Easter and at Christmas.

They tell the child: to discover the world already there and of the hundred they steal ninety-nine.

They tell the child: that work and play reality and fantasy science and imagination sky and earth reason and dream are things that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child that the hundred is not there. The child says: No way. The hundred is there.

-Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)

So we return to the question: what is the relationship between loose parts and the hundred languages? 

To that I say: Let us---as parents, teachers and caregivers---constantly strive to reassure children that we know the hundred is there. We celebrate their developing understandings of the world and themselves through whatever paths, tools, games, passions, and questions that speak to them and bring them joy. By providing environments and materials that offer possibilities for open-ended play and exploration, we communicate that value and provide those opportunities for children. 

So that’s how we ended our first workshop today, connecting the discussion to practice. Teachers returned to their classrooms or the art studio to create provocations utilizing open-ended materials that children will encounter on Monday morning. We toured the school to learn from and be inspired and supported by each other. What will happen next? We have guesses, of course, but truth is that we don’t know for certain. There is excitement to be found in that uncertainty, and a kind of beauty in that not knowing. Let’s discover it together.