With Our Heart Outside – Nature and adventure in the school park

Reggio Children Publication | With Our Heart Outside

The Salvador Allende preschool and municipal infant toddler center and preschool in Reggio Emilia have their “hearts outside”: a vital, changing heart that oxygentaes the gazes of children and adults. This heart is their garden or Park, a green area that is more than a simple place but resembles a plurality of worlds, closely intertwined with the proliferation of time and life, with our growing and our learning which are life and time.

This book tells the park’s story in the words, photographs, drawings and work of children who as protagonists with educators and parents, have experienced its transformations over the years, breathing life into a daily dialogue with nature, with its needs and grand design. This book was born of a desire to promote innovative ideas and ways of seeing, to rethink the design of green areas belonging to schools and make possible educational practices that are eco-sustainable and animated by ethical and aesthetic relations with nature we can no longer afford to delay.

Edited by Stefano Sturloni, Elena Maccaferri, Elena Corte