The 100 Languages of Children

We’re back in session at CGS after a lovely, long Winter Break. Our classes resumed on Tuesday with the sound of joy as the kids returned from their holiday celebrations, eager to share stories and details with their friends.

Our staff returned to school on Monday to a day of Professional Development…the scheduled “P.D. Day for Teachers” that marks our CGS calendar. It’s just one extra day for families to enjoy together, and a very important day for us to gather as collective group of educational professionals.

Marianna, our CGS Art Educator led the P.D. day with a paper-exploration and encouraged the CGS team to reread and remember the “100 Languages of Children” Poem written by Loris Malaguzzi. As the poem suggests, there are infinite ways that children discover, learn, invent, dream and create.

“The Hundred Languages are a metaphor for the extraordinary potentials of children,
their knowledge-building and creative processes,
the myriad forms with which life is manifested and knowledge is constructed.”  C. Rinaldi 2013

In our classrooms and throughout our school, it’s our goal to encourage thought processes that generate higher order thinking skills that go beyond basic observation of facts and memorization. As 21st century learners, our CGS students need to be critical thinkers who can make sense of information, analyze, compare, contrast, make inferences. Perhaps the most beautiful element of the process is to witness the multitude of ways in which our children learn.

Welcome Back, CGS Students and Families! We look forward to a progressive and productive term where we each continue to deepen our knowledge, to deepen our understanding, and to deepen our awareness of the amazingly inherent potential our children possess.