Preschool programs are often in classrooms, except when they’re not.

In Worcester, Mass., children enrolled in Head Start go beyond the classroom to the Worcester Art Museum, where they make art, and where that art is part of an exhibit — “World of Provocation: Making Learning Visible” – that closes tomorrow.

 

 

The benefit for children is that their classroom essentially stretches to include their larger community. This city-as-classroom strategy comes from Reggio Emilia, a philosophy of early learning — named after the Italian town where it started – that emphasizes hands on, project-based, child-centered learning.

Last year, as we’ve blogged, the Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development hosed an exhibit featuring the Reggio Emilia approach.

This approach has been adopted by staff at Worcester Child Development Head Start who spent over a year training to implement Reggio Emilia strategies in their program.

 

 

The next step was connecting children to the museum.

“Every week, a dozen pre-schoolers step off a yellow bus and follow a docent into ‘their’ Museum galleries to learn about perspective, light, and art. These are the Worcester Head Start students, and throughout the 2019 school year, each of the 35 classrooms across the city have visited the Museum at least once – six of the classes, at the Mill Swan B location, visited three times,” Sarah Leveille writes in a Worcester Art Museum blog post.

 

The partnership with the museum “ensures every child has an opportunity to visit, learn about art, and create their own. Each trip focuses on just 2 or 3 pieces, one of which the students sketch in the gallery, followed by an art project inspired by the day’s topic. ‘It helps them to really focus and look at the art,’ says Christine Lindberg, the program’s atelierista (art instructor). ‘They’re developing a critical eye, an awareness of materials and perspective. They also develop the language to talk about it, as they listen to and answer questions.’ ”

“Each of the four Head Start centers in the city showcase student art in their halls, alongside photos of the collection pieces that inspired them. In order to track growth and learning, all student projects are carefully documented, and the teachers speak proudly of their students’ progress.”

 

 

“After visiting the Museum, many classes tried their hand at creating replicas of famous art. In these photos you can see Da Vincis, Van Goghs, Monets, an Eric Carle, as well as a painting of WAM’s own courtyard statue and some lovely still life images,” the museum says on its Facebook page.

 

To fully engage children in the world of art, the museum hosted the World of Provocation exhibit. And last month, more than 500 people, including children and their families, attended the exhibit’s opening reception.

 

 

This is a project that Worcester should be fiercely proud of because it so skillfully weaves families, early educators, and the museum into a powerful and unforgettable early education experience.

And you can be part of it. As the museum says on its Facebook page, “It has been wonderful having the Head Start art here, and you can still visit it in our Higgins Education Wing, through June 5th. Come on by!”