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Today during our group discussion, Luka begins moving his body in long, low jumps across the grass. He pauses, crouches down, and leaps forward again, repeating the motion several times. When asked what he is doing, he explains, "I am a dragonfly going to the pond." Ryan continues to experiment with his movements, sometimes making shorter, quicker hops and at other times stretching his body out for longer balances. As other friends join, Rebecca demonstrates how to "balance like a bug" showing us how to bend our knees and push off the ground. This moment highlights how we are using our body as a tool for thinking and communication. Through movement, we are representing our understanding of how insects move and interact with their environment. Our actions suggest emerging knowledge of animal behaviour and spatial awareness, as well as an ability to translate ideas into physical form. The above reflects the values of the Reggio Emilia approach, where movement is seen as one of the many ways children communicate their thinking. We can extend our thinking by exploring other animal movements, introducing books about habitat, or inviting ourselves to represent our ideas through drawing, storytelling, or dramatic play. The sign is a track, journey, and movement. Every line tells a journey. Every sign is a trail left by movement. With us, we explore how moving in space becomes a trace, memory, and a tale. In this experience, we draw, trace and experience with lines that tell our movement in space.   The above drawings reveal how our thinking travels across different modes of expression. First through our body, then onto the page. Drawings are not separate from our movement; it is a continuation of it. In early stages of drawing progress, we often begin with scribbling, where marks are closely tied to physical action. These marks may random to adults, but they are deeply connected to gesture and motion. Large arm movements, repeated strokes, and rhythm. Our looping lines reflect this stage, where movement is directly translated into marks.  As our thinking develops, drawings often move into more controlled and intentional forms. Marks begin to represent ideas more clearly such as curls, stripes, or swirls, or specific objects. Luka's explanation shows that she is already assigning meaning to her marks, an important shift toward symbolic representation. Over time, we may enter a stage where drawings become more representation, including recognizable figures, spatial relationships, and details (e.g. a bug, an environment, and movement lines). These stages are not rigid or linear, we move fluidly between them depending on context and interest. This progression reflects physical experience supports meaning-making, and aligns with the Reggio Emilia approach, which values drawing, movement, and gesture as interconnected "languages" of expression. We support our learning by offering a variety of materials, including natural elements, paper, and watercolour, to extend our modes of expression. Through these opportunities, we encourage ourselves to revisit and represent our ideas in different ways, fostering storytelling as we develop and communicate our thinking through our compositions. After discussing about butterfly and caterpillar last week, Luka and Anthony are curious about earthworm. This started off with "Let's find a worm!" from Luka. We look down close to the ground, using our eyes to spy the worms. We find small worms, call "baby worm", and big worms. Some worms are going underground so fast, and we lose them. The boys try to catch them, digging the dirt with their fingers. This action tells us they are not only engaged, but also connecting to the nature. "What can we find in the nature?" This leads us to explore the nature. Our curiosity and wondering allow us to connect with the nature. In the rainy day, the ground is wet and we are curious what we can find. We move a log. "I found a worm!" says Luka. Emily comes with a brush, and trying to pick a worm carefully. She puts the worm in the worm house gently and Luka follows. He uses his fingers to pick a worm one by one. He is very concentrated, so is Ryan observing how Luka catches the worms. Rebecca brings a shovel, and tries to pick a worm up. She is encouraged to hold it with her fingers after she tried couple of time with the shovel. Anthony comes with sponges, checking out what we found. "They need water." says Anthony, squeezing his sponges on the dirt. He also finds a worm and says "I found a baby worm!" Dhanika brings a scoop of water first, and tries to give them water from a spray bottle. "They are taking a shower!" she says.             This shared experience highlights our curiosity about living things and our environments. Through hands-on exploration, we are forming ideas about care, habitat, and what living creatures need to survive. Our actions such as digging, observing, touching, and adding water demonstrate emerging understandings of responsibility and empathy toward other living beings. We use a variety of tools and strategies (brushes, shovels, fingers, sponges, spray bottles), showing problem-solving and experimentation. We also learn from one another by observing, imitating, and adapting our approaches. Working with clay, we create new possibilities for extending our thinking as we revisit and transform our ideas through hands-on exploration. Clay offers a tactile way to reimagine the worms, their movements, and their habitats, allowing us to shape and reshape our understanding in a three-dimensional form. Through our hands-on experiences we develop our further understanding about how to care for living things, encouraging ourselves to ask inquiry-based questions and share theories about worms and their environment. We question ourselves to come up with predictions how worms' habitat looks like:
Within these shared inquiries, Anthony and Ryan demonstrate growing empathy, responsibility, and ecological awareness as we engage with the living creatures and observe one another's thinking and actions. Our observation lines up very well with how worms behave in nature. When the worms move under the wet paper towels, they are essentially choosing conditions that mimic their natural habitat. Earthworms live in soil that is both moist and dark. Our experiment suggests that worms do not just randomly move. They actively seek out environments that help them survive. Kindest, Children & Friends. Archives April 2026
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