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Recently, I posted about All Around Child, a Reggio-Inspired preschool in Overland Park, KS. I loved the school so much that there was no way I could have condensed my thoughts and pictures down to one post. We are about to explore the magic inside the classrooms and you will see why…

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I quickly learned that the director of this school wisely re-purposes anything she can. Cribs are no exception. The center had just purchased these particular cribs when the powers that be told them they could no longer use them. Not to worry, they broke them down and made these cozy little nooks for the infants and toddlers to relax in.

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Classrooms with older, more mobile toddlers received lofts out of their re-purposed cribs.

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Some teachers even got creative and added tubing to the side of the lofts for the children to toss balls into from the loft. What a way to build those gross motor skills.

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That same classroom had this awesome spiral tubing hanging for the toddlers to experiment with.

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I loved this idea of placing sticky mirrors onto a simple backing. These babies were fascinated with all of the light reflections they were seeing in the mirrors.

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There were some active and amazing things happening in the 3-5 year old classrooms as well. This class had recently started reading the Magic Tree House books and were fascinated with tree houses. They were in the midst of designing and creating their own tree houses when I entered. This girl demonstrated how she was hammering her ladder to her tree house.

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Their teachers pointed out that they were trying to make tree houses out of everything. Love the idea of reusing these Kleenex boxes to make tree houses.

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In another 3-5 year old classroom, they were studying weather and how it affects gardens growing. They created this beautiful rain cloud.

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And proudly displayed what they had harvested from their garden.

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Another beautiful way to display various seeds/herbs/flowers from the garden. It is simply mason jar lids and contact paper!

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Another class was involved in an in-depth artist study including Chihuly who inspired them to create this beautiful art out of plastic cups and sharpies.

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This work was inspired by Tony Crae's recycled art. The children voted on what they would make, of course Batman won.

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This same class did a long-term “beautiful stuff” inspired piece where the students continuously brought in found items that they wanted to add to the project.

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I absolutely loved the use of fabric squares in creating the alphabet in this 3-5 year old classroom…

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And the use of weaving and sewing to create this alphabet.

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In the Junior Kindergarten room the students were busy studying butterflies. This provocation was an invitation to create a butterfly garden.

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I loved this tic tac toe board made out of a small chalkboard and river rocks painted with X's and O's.

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I thought the idea of putting Velcro strips on shaped blocks was a genius way to show how you can put shapes together to make new shapes.

I had such a great time visiting the classrooms and interacting with the children who were clearly very involved in the learning process. Then I stepped outside and was blown away…stay tuned for the outside edition of All Around Child.