Our Image of Childhood

The GREDC Blog

Recent Study: Lights

Andrew DeJong

Tesoro has been playing around with a variety of lights. The children have been experimenting how different toys change color in the presence of the rope lights.

Infant plays with giraffe toy amidst rope lights.

They even experimented with their hands and legs, touching where the rope lights were illuminating their skin.

Infants play with a rope light.

In the dark, and with a more powerful light, they noticed how their entire hand changes color!

Infant holds his hands up to a strong egg light.

Other Recent Posts...

Judah constructs his prototype
Tom Dodd

Judah’s Bridge

For several weeks Judah had been adamant that he wanted to design a rope bridge for the playground. He showed us where it should go and discussed materials that should be used. We spoke about how we could promote the idea to everyone else and then decided to build a

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Tom Dodd

Playground Redesign

These conversations set us off on a school-wide, child-led project to improve our outdoor areas and work out how to make the best use of the space we have. Our students made many requests for items like real life fire trucks, swimming pool, more water play, pirate ship, bridge and

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Tom Dodd

Gigi’s Garden

The garden contains several raised garden beds and lattice trellises within a safely enclosed space. Children of all ages use the garden to explore, experiment with plants, water, and bugs, and learn about life cycles and nature.

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Lauren Huyck

Mentor Teacher

B.S in psychology and writing
A.A. in early childhood education
Teaching since 2010

My name is Lauren Huyck and I am the afternoon lead for the Scoperta classroom. I started as a teaching assistant when the center was still part of Aquinas in 2010. When we became the GREDC in 2012, I stayed on. In 2014, I was excited to accept the role of lead teacher.

I have a Bachelors in psychology and writing, and an associates in early childhood education. I am currently working on getting a Masters in psychology with a concentration in child development.

I love seeing the children grow and learn. There are so many developmental milestones that I get to see and experience. I fell in love with the Reggio approach and work to incorporate it in all my experiences with children. It has definitely taught me to treat children as citizens of the world.

I honestly could go on about how much I love the work I do and how passionate I feel about every child having quality care but that would take eons. So I will end with these two quotes:

“To take children seriously is to value them for who they are right now rather than adults-in-the-making.”

Alfie Kohn

If you trust play, you will not have to control your child’s development as much. Play will raise the child in ways you can never imagine.

Vince Gowmon