“The Hundred Is There” - Loris Malaguzzi

Herbert’s Garden is a beautifully illustrated children’s picture book written and illustrated by Lara Hawthorne. The story follows Herbert, a small garden slug who feels ordinary compared to the other fascinating creatures around him.

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Throughout the story, Herbert admires the talents of other garden creatures. He wishes he could spin webs like spiders or build underground tunnels like ants. Feeling small and unimportant, he wanders through the garden at night searching for his place in the world. Eventually, Herbert discovers that he too can create something beautiful and meaningful.

This inquiry question “What are you good at, just like the characters in the story?” encourages us to recognize and celebrate our own strengths and abilities while making personal connections to the characters in Herbert's Garden. It supports self-awareness, confidence, and positive identity development.  Through discussion and storytelling, we begin to understand that everyone has different talents and that each person's contribution is valuable. The question also promotes empathy, inclusion, and appreciation of diversity within a learning community.

Dhanika: "I am good at jumping and also at painting."

Luka demonstrates what he is good at by spontaneously jumping, showing confidence in his physical abilities and expressing himself through action.

Likewise, Anthony's response of jumping reflects an emerging awareness of his own strengths and abilities. 

Rebecca extends her jumping by adding different movements, such as jumping backwards and turning around.

The above moments highlight how we can express our ideas, feelings, and talents in many different ways, not only through words but also through actions, movement, and creative expression.

As each one of us carefully select and paste beautiful colourful cut-out papers onto the sturdy cardboard, each individual strengths begin to shine through in unique and meaningful ways. Some of us demonstrate remarkable creativity, thoughtfully combining colours, shapes, and patterns to express our ideas and imagination. Others reveal strong focus and perseverance as we patiently apply glue, adjust tiny pieces, and continue working through challenges with determination. 

For some of us, this learning experience becomes an opportunity to strengthen our fine motor skills, and hand-eye coordination as we grasp, position, and press each piece with care. Others show confidence in decision-making, independently choosing where each colour and shape belong. A few of us naturally embrace leadership and collaboration, sharing materials, offering suggestions, or encouraging our peers throughout the process.

Beyond our physical act of painting, our learning experience also invites us to express our sense of identity and individuality. Each artwork becomes a reflection of seeing beauty in the world around us. While Emily and Luka may have enjoyed arranging pieces symmetrically and neatly, Dhanika and Rebecca may have explored abstract patterns or layered textures with curiosity and boldness. These differences highlight that every one of us approaches learning from own strengths and perspectives.

This creative exploration reminds us that learning is not about producing identical outcomes, but about honouring the unique capabilities each one of us brings into the environment. Through open-ended experiences such as collage-making, we are given space to build confidence in our abilities, develop a sense of agency, and discover that our ideas and contributions are valued.

By inviting friends, as artists of own works, to tell the story behind what we make, Kaho is encouraging the artwork to become a record of thinking - decisions, doubts, discoveries, memories, experiments, and changes in perspective.

"Revisit our thinking in a visible way" suggests that storytelling makes invisible process tangible. The artwork shows what is created, while the story reveals how and why it comes into being. Together, we document growth.

When we look back at our compositions, we are not simply reviewing our artwork; we are revising our thinking. A friend may notice patterns, another may remember a story behind a shape, while another may focus on colour, balance, movement, or texture.

Our extended interest demonstrates how we continue to construct knowledge through reflection, observation, and conversation. The process honours the idea that learning is not fixed or linear, but evolving and deeply individual.

“The hundred is there.”

When Loris Malaguzzi expresses this idea, he is reminding us that children do not learn, think, or express themselves in only one way. Every child carries “a hundred languages” - a hundred ways of wondering, exploring, communicating, creating, feeling, and understanding the world.

Some of us speak confidently with words.
Some of us communicate through movement, drawing, building, singing, dancing, storytelling, or silence.
Some of us carefully observe nature.
Some of us construct complex ideas with others.
Some of us express empathy through caring for others. 
Some of us reveal our thinking through questions that others may never have considered.

The “hundreds” represent the richness of our strengths.

In this way Malaguzzi reminds us to value our many forms of expression than expecting a single “correct” outcome. By encouraging ourselves to return to our cut-out pieces, discuss them, rearrange them, or expand them, we create space for our voices, theories, and creative choices to emerge. The compositions become more than art activities; they become documentation of our thinking and identity.

During the moment of revisiting our own creations, we are invited to walk through our thinking at a slower pace. In this unhurried space, we notice details, remember intentions, and reconnect with the ideas that first inspires our work.

We extend our thinking through a visit outdoors into nature, where we explore and identify living and non-living things within our environment. Inspired by Loris Malaguzzi’s belief that children express and understand the world through “a hundred languages” the outdoor learning experience offers another meaningful way for us to observe, question, investigate, and communicate our ideas.

As we revisit our individual cut-out compositions and reflect on shapes, textures, patterns, and relationships, we begin making deeper connections with the natural world around us. Outdoors, we exhibit curiosity about leaves, trees, insects, rocks, soil, sticks, and water, carefully discussing which things are living and which are non-living. Through touch, observation, conversation, drawing, movement, and collection, we use many forms of expression to share our understandings.

These learning experiences nurture our growing awareness that all elements, living and non-living, have value and purpose. By slowing down to observe and appreciate the environment, we develop empathy, responsibility, and support toward the people world around us.

In the spirit of “No Way. The Hundred Is There,” the learning continues beyond the classroom walks.

During our nature walk, friends share an idea that flowers and trees are not living. When we say flowers are “not living,” we are often focusing on visible movement as the sign of life. This is indeed a valuable point of deepening our thinking rather than simply correcting.

What makes us think flowers and plants are not living things? Is it because they stay still and do not move around like animals or people? Through our discussions and investigations, we are exploring how plants grow, change, and respond to the world around them.

To extend our thinking, we explore this idea further through sunflower art, while continuing conversations about how plants grow and change.

Kindest,
Children & Friends.