Here are some key features of Reggio Emilia's early childhood program:

The role of the environment-as-teacher

·         Within the Reggio Emilia schools, the educators are very concerned about what their school environments teach children. Hence, a great attention is given to the look and feel of the classroom. It is often referring to the environment as the "third teacher"

·         The aesthetic beauty within the schools is seen as an important part of respecting the child and their learning environment

·         A classroom atmosphere of playfulness and joy pervades

·         Teachers organize environments rich in possibilities and provocations that invite the children to undertake extended exploration and problem solving, often in small groups, where cooperation and disputation mingle pleasurably.

·         Documentation of children's work, plants, and collections that children have made from former outings are displayed both at the children's and adult's eye level.

·         Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play areas and work tables for children from different classrooms to come together.

Children's multiple symbolic languages

·         Using the arts as a symbolic language through which to express their understandings in their project work

·         Consistent with Dr. Howard Gardner's notion of schooling for multiple intelligences, the Reggio approach calls for the integration of the graphic arts as tools for cognitive, linguistic, and social development.

·         Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms such as print, art, construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play. These are viewed as essential to children's understanding of experience.

Documentation as assessment and advocacy
(Rather unique in Reggio approach)

·         Documenting and displaying the children's project work, which is necessary for children to express, revisit, and construct and reconstruct their feelings, ideas and understandings.

·         Similar to the portfolio approach, documentation of children's work in progress is viewed as an important tool in the learning process for children, teachers, and parents.

·         Pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what they are doing, feeling and thinking, and the children's interpretation of experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation of the dynamics of learning.

·         Teachers act as recorders (documenters) for the children, helping them trace and revisit their words and actions and thereby making the learning visible. 

Long-term projects

·         Supporting and enriching children's learning through in-depth, short-term (one week) and long-term (throughout the school year) project work, in which responding, recording, playing, exploring, hypothesis building and testing, and provoking occurs.

·         Projects are child-centered, following their interest, returning again and again to add new insights.

·         Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic.

The teacher as researcher

·         The teacher's role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children.

·         Within such a teacher-researcher role, educators carefully listen, observe, and document children's work and the growth of community in their classroom and are to provoke and stimulate thinking

·         Teachers are committed to reflection about their own teaching and learning.

·         Classroom teachers working in pairs and collaboration, sharing information and mentoring between personnel.

Home-school relationships

·         Children, teachers, parents and community are interactive and work together. Building a community of inquiry between adults and children.

·         For communication and interaction can deepen children's inquiry and theory building about the world around them

·         Programs in Reggio are family centered. Loris's vision of an "education based on relationships" focuses on each child in relation to others and seeks to activate and support children's reciprocal relationships with other children, family, teachers, society, and the environment.

What makes the Reggio Emilia approach stand out?
In a nutshell, the Reggio approach articulates children to acquire skills of critical thinking and collaboration.

(Information on the Reggio Emilia Approach from www.brainy-child.com)