“Project Zero, a research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has investigated the development of learning processes in children, adults, and organizations since 1967. Today, Project Zero is building on this research to help create communities of reflective, independent learners; to enhance deep understanding within disciplines; and to promote critical and creative thinking. Project Zero’s mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.”

I first discovered Howard Gardner and Project Zero during a conference in Reggio Emila (February 2007) – I was browsing through the conference book store and decided to purchase a collaboration between the Reggio schools and Project Zero, titled “Make Learning Visible: Children as Individual and Group Learners”

“This short film is part of a series entitled I Can Make Art and focuses on the work of Emily Carr. In this film, kids examine Carr’s unusual world and the inspiration for her haunting landscapes. Drawing on this inspiration, they then attempt to create a giant forest mural on a window in their school. The series is comprised of six short films that take a kid’s-eye view of a diverse group of Canadian visual artists.”

“Films for Change is a bilingual National Film Board program designed to integrate documentary films on the environment into secondary level education.” Don’t be intimidated by “secondary level education” as these resources are valuable for children of all ages, as you know, it all depends on how you use them. “A comprehensive Teacher’s Guide is available to help students develop media literacy and environmental skills as well as to create an opportunity for students to implement environmental action projects in the classroom.

“Growing Schools aims to give all children the opportunity to connect with the living environment, whether it is an inner city window box or a vast country estate, a school veg plot or a natural woodland. Interacting with living plants and animals provides a very rich, hands-on learning experience in which both formal and informal education can flourish.

The Growing Schools programme supports the Learning Outside the Classroom Manifesto, and shares its conviction that every young person should experience the world beyond the classroom as an essential part of learning and personal development, whatever their age, ability or circumstance. Within these broad boundaries Growing Schools focuses particularly on three areas that are accessible to all, at some level, as a context for learning. They are: Food and farming, including the managed countryside, Gardens, gardening and green spaces, and Wildlife and the natural environment.

Growing Schools also meshes very well with the Sustainable Schools agenda. It provides a practical approach to its core theme of care – for oneself, for each other and for the environment – and is particularly relevant to the food & drink gateway.”

Within this website, I found a pdf titled “Get Growing” – an excellent resource on the values of including children in growing projects (tips for educators and parents too).

Bright Star a film by Jane Campion

Item of the month from the Ephemera Society

Grocer’s Shop teaching jigsaw with six interchangeable shelves
“Teaches spelling of many household words”
Devised by Ray Bethers for Summit Games Ltd, Leeds
Circa 1960 457 x 330mm (18 x 13in)