Activities

Graphic and Painting Activities

Iconic representation is a field of experience that is typically human. It reveals itself as a need, as a pleasurable, rewarding, and liberating activity, and as a highly expressive language. Children approach this type of language through scribbling, a primordial graphic sign that forms the basis of all their figurative activities. Through this sign, they pour out the traits of their personality, their level of perceptual and representational development, as well as their degree of motor coordination.
Drawing with pencils and crayons is among the proposed techniques, followed by collage, which can be created using simple materials such as newspaper and glue prepared by the pupils themselves, as well as frottage, tearing, and painting. There exists a childlike sense of aesthetics made up of rhythm—that is, repetitions of elements—bold color combinations, a balance between lines and spaces that certainly do not follow adult proportions, and spatial symmetries. It is therefore important that children become familiar with colors as early as possible, because colors imply knowledge of things, shapes, space, the body, the sky, the sea, and the world that surrounds them.

Manipulative and Visual Activities

The art teacher will introduce the working tools and, through manipulation, teach the first rudimentary gestures for modeling, sculpting, and shaping sand, clay, papier-mâché, and salt dough. This expressive activity can become for the child a means of releasing hidden impulses, as it allows pressing, holding, crushing, or even destroying the work produced. Furthermore, when appropriately guided, small hands will create objects by recycling plastic bottles, egg cartons, milk containers, cans, plates, cups, paper napkins, and much more. Children will have great fun while learning to recycle and to respect nature and the environment.

Body Expression Activities

These activities serve as a preparatory introduction to dance and body expression, understood not only as physical activity but also as cultural and social activity. Within the educational process, they function as a language of communication and mutual understanding that encourages children to express their emotions within an intercultural perspective.
The aim is to develop rhythmic movement, coordination, expressiveness, memory, creativity, and spatial awareness.

Psychomotor Activities

Between the ages of 2 and 5, the self is formed through constant interaction between the child, the world of objects, and the world of others. Children learn through their bodies, and for this reason psychomotor education—centered on play and movement—constitutes an indispensable part of education as a whole. Team games, balance games, and strategy games are therefore proposed, as these activities are capable of developing coordination as well as respect for turns and rules.

Theatrical Activities

Dramatization and theatrical experiences play an important role in the school’s educational pathway because they highlight processes of identification and emotional control. They are, in fact, complex activities with clear playful, symbolic, and psychological implications. Games, costumes, puppet theater, storytelling, and the invention of fantastical stories: each of these activities, through its own expressive modes, contributes to promoting children’s learning.
The teacher, acting as a mediator between the child and reality, does not teach acting, but instead creates a series of motivating situations that encourage children to express themselves.

The game of dressing up, for example, is something special within symbolic play. It is the game of the self—or rather, the self that plays. One is, one is no longer, only to reappear and rediscover oneself. It is the ability children acquire to play with their own image and identity, grasping from reality the elements that make each object and each character unique. They capture its essence and disguise themselves with it.

For a child, a father’s jacket, a cloak, a cone, or a paper crown on the head is enough to take on a character, to become—through this transitional object (Winnicott)—this or that character represented by the object. This transformation initiates a game-narration-representation-invention of stories that arise from those characters and extend across the wide boundaries of imagination. It can be argued that in games of personification the child’s universe disappears and is symbolized: figures and characters may relate to everyday real or virtual life, or to fantastical figures that mainly reflect experiences connected to changes in the instinctual world. It is a game in which what matters is not appearance or seeming to others, but being. The jacket, the cloak, the hat, and so on enable one to be, in essence, the identity of the role-character one wishes to evoke.
Imagination, inventiveness, and creativity are left free to express themselves in the forms and ways best suited to the child, while the teacher, with professional expertise in identifying and applying various animation techniques, encourages pupils to participate in all the phases that make up the educational journey.

Sound and Music Activities

Starting from storytelling and recitation, children are gradually guided to discover and use sounds as well, of which their voices are a first example. The sound stimuli children perceive outside of school are varied and sometimes overlapping, to the point of becoming confused and incomprehensible. It is necessary to prevent children from becoming accustomed to sounds without truly listening to them, in order to avoid any form of passive reception. They must become accustomed from an early age to recognizing and understanding the sound world, distinguishing between sounds and noises, and producing sounds themselves in a meaningful way to express their own experiences and to relate to others.
The activities are carried out in simple ways, such as:

Listening to classical music to create a suggestive, engaging effect, prompting mental associations and images related to the child’s life experiences
Learning songs and rhythmic nursery rhymes to develop and enrich language
Storytelling, recordings, and soundscapes of fairy tales, as well as playful representations of sounds, discovering sound games and musical rules, eventually leading to the use of instruments, both real and improvised
Listening to silence and to the voices discovered within silence—listening for the sake of listening
Shared listening experiences to strengthen bonds that awaken and warm emotions
Listening to marches, dances, and folk songs rooted in the essence of one’s own people and land, as well as those of other countries, providing children with a multicultural education and an initial approach to democratic coexistence

Indeed, by playing and listening to music together with classmates, social awareness develops, and with it the child begins to give up a portion of their selfishness and aggression in order to live peacefully with others.

Multimedia Activities

Early childhood education does not neglect the approach to the written word alongside other forms of expression within the semiological sphere. In the same way, it cannot and must not neglect a more innovative learning method: today learning takes place not only through reading, listening, and seeing, but through listening and seeing together, via computer screens and educational, interactive multimedia products—edutainment—designed specifically for young users. According to some educational theorists, the computer can be understood as a prosthesis of the mind and, as such, a tool that can enhance teaching. As Bruner states, “The point is not prosthetic technology, although it is essential for a culture. The point is the methodology of inquiry, the use of the mind, which is central.”

Gardening

Gardening represents the simplest way to establish a strong relationship with the natural environment through an experience that early childhood education incorporates into its educational project. Being the creators of a plant’s birth and then of its growth fosters curiosity, a desire to learn and discover, and provides extraordinary joy. Proof of this is the excitement children feel when coming into contact with water, soil, and its countless forms of life.

Foreign Language

Games, songs, listening to audio materials, and viewing DVDs in English with a native-speaking teacher.