When we talk about the kindergarten environment, beautiful, neat, lively and lovely pictures will immediately come to mind. Indeed, teachers' exquisite handmade works, careful color matching and layout design can give children beautiful enjoyment, but children generally dare not move, fearing that they will be criticized by teachers. In addition, when creating an environment, teachers often list their "possessions" accumulated for many years, and the whole classroom is full. As a result, children have no room for activities and lose interest in learning. The environment that teachers have worked so hard to create does not reflect the value of education. The creation of this environment is actually a monologue of the teacher, which does not conform to the law of children's physical and mental development, and will cause a kind of "psychological fatigue" to children, and the environment created lacks educational value.
Reggio's educational philosophy holds that the created environment should be a paradise for children to learn, and children are the real masters of the environment; Teachers are collaborators who accompany children to experience the fun of active learning, and even more, they are mentors who provide children with an active learning environment and promote their learning process. Through years of educational practice and continuous study and reflection, I think the creation of environment should start with the following points:
First, the teacher's default.
Education is a purposeful and planned activity, so there must be presupposition, and so must the creation of environment. In a certain environment, the curriculum needs certain environmental support, and whether the environment creation is reasonable will affect the curriculum.
1, the creation of the environment should be based on the objectives of the course.
Combine the creation environment with the curriculum objectives, and increase or decrease materials according to the objectives to predict the possible impact on children's constructive learning.
2. The creation of environment should meet the needs and interests of children.
Reggio's educational philosophy puts forward that teachers should be successful observers, with keen eyes and good insight into children's needs and interests in activities. For example, when the theme activity of "Beautiful Campus My Home" was launched, it happened that more than half of the children in the class had just moved to a new home. The topic that children talk about all day is "my home", and the same home is what children are most familiar with and interested in, so we take the "I love my home" activity as the starting point of the theme activity. In order to let the children experience the warmth of "home" and understand their relationship with the community, we created the "Secondary Five Class Community" with the children. The whole class is a community with its own home, kindergarten, supermarket, business department, bank and so on. Every child plays an identity and lives and studies happily in the "community".
3, the creation of the environment should consider the integration of various fields.
The outline clearly points out that "the environment is an important educational resource, and children's development should be effectively promoted through the creation and utilization of the environment". The creation of environment should emphasize that "the contents of various fields penetrate each other and promote the development of children's emotions, attitudes, abilities, knowledge and skills from different angles." For example, in the theme activity of "Beautiful Campus, My Home", combined with the requirements of various fields, various areas convenient for children to communicate are provided, and various statistical tables, production materials, pictures of communities and world-famous buildings are provided, so that children's emotions, attitudes, abilities, knowledge and skills can be improved to varying degrees in "close contact" with the environment.
Second, the preparation of materials
1, providing materials for children should follow the following principles:
(1) The materials provided for children should be operable, which can arouse children's interest in learning, and children can make a keen and positive response to the surrounding environment and promote their development in active construction. In the theme activity of "Beautiful Campus, My Home", we provided a lot of production materials for children, especially the small leaves and branches collected by children during their outdoor visits, which are all "treasures" in children's eyes. We also invited the big brother of architecture department to design their dream home with these materials. In the process of making, the children are full of enthusiasm and constantly have questions: "Big Brother, what materials are environmentally friendly?" "Why are many roofs designed as spires?" "How to design spiral stairs so as not to get dizzy?" ..... With the help of my eldest brother, the "Class Five Middle School Community" was finally completed, and subsequent generating activities were constantly produced, such as the naming of the community, the greening of the community, the small sales department and so on.
(2) The created environment can support interpersonal communication, provide realistic conditions for children to actively interact with teachers and peers, and help children to actively learn in communication. For example, when children wrote Where I Live, they found many problems: "Kindergarten is children's favorite place, and we think kindergarten should be dome-shaped." "There should be children in the kindergarten." "There should be a sign on the science and technology building, otherwise people won't find it." ..... In the children's questions and discussions, the activities we generated naturally came into being.
(3) The created environment should be multifunctional, challenging and changeable, so that children's desire for active exploration can always be stimulated. Environment is no longer a completely materialized inanimate thing, but an educational force full of personality charm and thoughts, which can guide children's cognition and help them gain an understanding of the world around them through interaction with the environment.
2. The materials come from children, teachers and parents.
In the theme activity of "Beautiful Campus, My Home", "Class 5 Community" was used as a window to show children's interests and experiences. Through games, group activities, community activities, parents' participation and other activities in the activity area, the creation of the environment becomes a development process of design-implementation-adjustment-generation-re-implementation, in which children, teachers and parents actively participate, and the content of the course is also included.
Third, children's rich experience.
The influence of education and environment is mainly manifested in supporting or hindering the process of children's construction. Therefore, if we want to grasp the opportunity of "teaching", we must grasp the construction process of children, and the premise of this construction is children's rich experience. Combined with the theme activities, we carried out activities such as visiting the community, visiting Children's Home and "architectural knowledge as I Know It". During the activity, the children felt the warmth of home and the convenience brought by the community, and also learned a lot of common sense about architecture.
Fourth, the adjustment of the environment.
Abundant and suitable environmental resources can provide children with endless opportunities to actively explore. Children will take the initiative to think and communicate with the environment and others, and children's generation activities will follow. The creation of the environment will be constantly adjusted according to children's learning needs. Example: When organizing children to visit Children's Home, the children raised such a question: "How should we go?" Everyone came up with many ways: "You can call ahead and ask." "You can design a road map, and we can look at the map and find it." "You can ask your uncle and aunt to pick us up." ..... So we opened the theme wall of "Please come to my house", showing various road maps made by children and parents, so that children can appreciate and communicate with each other, and some children are measuring with various materials. It turns out that they are looking for the "best route"!
Third, the continuation of the environment.
As Maraguchi said, "Our pre-school walls can talk and record." The environment records the process of curriculum implementation in its intuitive and vivid way. In the process of interaction with the environment, children constantly discover and solve problems, and the solution of old problems breeds new problems, and the environment will continue to expand and extend on this basis. In the exploration and practice of environmental creation, I have a new understanding of the educational value of the environment. Kindergarten curriculum reform not only needs to make great efforts in curriculum content and organization, but also needs to reflect on whether our environment conforms to the educational orientation of education reform and the law of children's physical and mental development, endow the environment we have created with more and more positive educational value, strive to create a "family" atmosphere for children, let the environment grow together with children, and make kindergartens truly a "happy home" for children's life and study.