At The Nest Community School, the first 6 weeks of school, what we call inserimento, are a tender and precious time for building relationships and expanding the circle of community around each child. Inserimento comes from the Italian word meaning a period of settling in or integrating. The nursery schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, from which we draw our philosophical inspiration, describe the importance of these first weeks of school and provide us with guiding goals for welcoming each child and family into our community. For many young children, preschool is their first group experience and the first time they are part of a community of peers.
During these early weeks, new children are discovering a whole new type of community—one that is not made up of mostly family and family friends. This new community, consisting of teachers, peers, and their families, opens up a world of possibilities for children to stretch and grow their identity, strengths, and perspectives. However, it can take time to settle into this new environment. This is monumental for children, as they begin answering questions for themselves:
Who am I?
How do I belong?
Who can I trust here?
How do I make new friends?
How do I play with someone new?
What is my place in this new group?
What can I share with others about myself?
Children begin seeing themselves through the context of others and recognize that others have the capacity to be both similar to and different from themselves. As teachers, we understand how tender and important a child's first few days and weeks in preschool are. During this time of inserimento, our goal is twofold: first, to celebrate the unique gifts each child and family brings to our community, and second, to build strong relationships between children, teachers, and the classroom environment.
We are so honored to begin another school year and to witness another tender time of inserimento. We look forward to seeing the first sparks of new friendships and being surprised and filled with wonder as we see the world through fresh sets of eyes. The teachers have spent a long time thinking about the new year, curating their classrooms, and preparing themselves for building new relationships that will set the stage for the rest of the year.
What does this look like for our classrooms, routines and curriculum?
At The Nest Community School, we meet each family during a family tour, allowing them time to observe our environments, ask questions and learn about the program. As they move forward with their child’s enrollment, we begin learning about their family and child. Each family will provide an “About my Child” form where they can speak to their child’s growth, development, family, parenting styles, culture and traditions. Before a child’s first day, they will visit their classroom, meet their teachers and have an opportunity to explore for a short time with their parents nearby. This allows for the parents and teachers to discuss their child and for the teacher to get to know the child before they begin.
Inserimento at the Nest is the first 6 weeks of school. Our main curriculum goals are:
Building Community
Develop a sense of welcoming and belonging for all children, teachers and adults.
Getting to know one another
Letting others know about us
Learning about individual’s strengths, interests and gifts
Learning about the families that make up our Community
Learning about routines, materials, agreements
Giving children the tools to interact and play together, building their “Social Strategy Toolbox”
The process of inserimento requires a carefully designed and prepared environment, which immediately conveys messages of welcome and respect to parents and children. Such messages must be evident in the care given to the physical space, in the positive attitudes and behaviors of the given to the physical space, in the positive attitudes and behaviors of the educators during this process, as well as in the great variety of personalized responses to each family's requests. The main indicator of welcoming to parents is that they are seriously invited to spend as much time as possible in their child's classroom. At the same time as the parent is getting to know the teacher, the teacher has the opportunity to socialize with the parent. Eventually the child will benefit from the relationships growing between parents and teachers.
Environmental supports for Inserimento
Classroom environments are warm, cozy, homelike and welcoming. Children’s names, pictures and family photos are incorporated into the environment, giving the immediate message, “you belong here”
Classroom environment offerings are rich yet simple to set up and support. Our teacher time during the period of inserimento will involve lots of movement between children, helping them become familiar with their new routines, expectations and environment.
Teachers make plans for all of the classroom interest areas to be supported with open ended and rich materials. These first offerings might honor the teacher’s questions (what might the children do if….?) their creative experiments (I wonder what would happen if…?) and their personal investment in the classroom (This provocation was so wonderful before, will this group enjoy it….?)
Other inserimento supports
Teachers act as the “host” of the classroom, mingling and introducing everyone to everything. This role builds community and welcomes all in. Use names frequently, find times to say names as much as possible, to a point where it feels a bit much. Introduce children to other children, children to adults and adults to the other adults, “Arlo, this is Falco” “Look, Joey’s in the kitchen” “Wow, look at the hat Marc has on his head!” “Amaya, look there’s Marcy, she is Ella’s mom” “Good Morning Marcus, remember me, my name is Chelsea!” “Kelly, you remember Jake, Jaxon’s dad? These two have been playing with each other so much today!” This will be an ever present role during the whole first 6 weeks, we may think that our preschoolers need only one introduction to each other but they actually need dozens of times getting to know someone or something before they remember.
Teachers act as “tour guides”, explaining what is happening before, during and after it happens. They show where things are in the building, “We’ll walk by the big bookshelf then look, here’s our classroom door!” sharing about the areas of the classroom, “Here’s our block area and here’s the play house!”
Teachers introduce children to how specific materials are used. How do we hold books, how do we use scissors, how do we take care of markers so they don't dry out, how to sort and return materials after play, where specific materials are ok to use (scissors in a chair, balls in the hall etc.) where to put their belongings, where water bottles may be stored, where tape can go, not mouthing foods, how to use glue, do children take home beading, which ones don't etc.
Teachers look for conflict to reflect upon with the whole group. For the first 2-3 weeks, when we notice conflict or behaviors that we would like to learn strategies to avoid, we may take lots of photos and notes to share back to the group at a later circle time. When seeing someone taking a block, someone pushing, someone knocking down another person’s work, someone running out of the room etc. save the story. Share the story at a group time, circle, snack or lunch and get the children’s feedback. “How do you feel if someone pushes your body?” “Do we want to come up with a plan to take care of our structure’s?” “How would you want someone to treat your body?” “What can we do to keep ourselves safe as we go downstairs?” Etc. allow the children to discuss and share their ideas, experiences and stories. Then decide on an agreement together. “In our room, no one wants to get hurt. So let's all agree to treat bodies gently!” Invite the children to agree together, “Raise your hand if you will do your best to treat other’s gently!” Keep the momentum of the agreement by writing it down for all of the children to see and then reminding them of the story of the agreement work throughout the year. This community based way of creating agreements is at the heart of a democratic society and shared morality and ideals. We don’t avoid hurting because some teacher with authority tells us, it is because our peers have all shared that they don't want to be hurt, and neither do we. It is at the heart of empathy and we want to ensure our foundational classroom agreements begin in this way. Ultimately teachers are there to hold boundaries, limits and ensure every child's right to health and safety, but growing these conversations from concrete examples helps children understand these concepts deeply and can support long term cooperation and investment.
Stage 1: Observing for conflict and sharing back the story |
Stage 2: Inviting Children’s feedback, ideas, stories and thoughts through open ended questions |
Stage 3: Gather and reflect their thinking back to them, settling on a way to summarize an agreement |
Stage 4: Invite the children to agree together and keep the momentum of the agreement during the day |
Teacher’s keep notes of what they observe and learn about each student and share that back with the group. Find a strategy that works well for you to take notes, maybe writing children’s strengths on a photo of them in the classroom for all to see or keeping a class roster with notes for each child. Find ways of connecting children with their strengths so they see their peers as pillars of knowledge and as resources for collaboration. “Yesterday I saw Milly draw a person. Joel, maybe you could ask her about her strategy for eyes.” “Oh yeah, Jasper likes yellow too!” “Should we dance to Ammy’s favorite song then Carlos's?” Like a bird building a Nest, teachers in inserimento find hundreds of ways of making connections to weave together the community into a strong group for the year to come.
Over the course of the 6 weeks of inserimento, we will plan and discuss project work for helping children share about themselves, build their own sense of self identity. For the youngest children that might look like creating blocks with each child’s photo adhered to the surface, for the older group that might be looking closely and developing strategies for self portraits.
Over the course of the 6 weeks of inserimento, we will plan and discuss project work for helping children’s families share about what makes them unique and special. Maybe the children are interested in playdough and pretending to bake bread and we invite families to share a special recipe. Perhaps a group loves special one on one walks in the forest and wants to write invitations and plan a family walk day. This will be the beginning of planning for our emergent curriculum projects and the possibilities are endless!
Group gatherings during this time will be mainly focused on getting to know each other, getting to know routines for group gatherings, adding strategies to their Social Strategy Toolbox and sharing back stories from the children’s work. Older ages might start focusing more on the way their identity aligns with academic concepts (what does your name look like? How old are you? What is your favorite color?)
Inserimento sets the stage for the whole year, the more intention we set now, the more we can rely on the strength of that community as we journey through a year of learning together!
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