Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Ateliers

The benefits of offering children continuous access to recycled materials in Reggio-inspired 'ateliers' are explained by Jane Blant.

Freeing young children to express their creativity in stimulating and original ways can be challenging for many early years settings. One approach that we have found effective at Alfreton Nursery School is to provide 'treasure chests' of open-ended resources. Now a feature of our continuous provision, these containers offer our children the freedom to explore, create, imagine and innovate, through the stimulation of senses, so encouraging them to become confident, independent and motivated, with a positive attitude to learning.

Inspiration for creating the ateliers came from a module that I studied at the University of Derby, entitled 'The Creative Child'. Part of the course covered the Reggio Emilia approach to early learning. We have modelled our containers on the 'ateliers' (art studios) that are a key feature of Reggio pre-schools.

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