CIRC Elementary presents: Exploring Nature with a Transdisciplinary Lens

Exploring how nature, art, and science can come together through Reggio-inspired and IB transdisciplinary learning. What can children discover when we invite them to slow down, observe closely, and listen to what nature has to teach them? This experiential professional development workshop invites elementary educators to explore the garden and natural environment as rich spaces for inquiry, creativity, and scientific discovery. Inspired by the Reggio Emilia idea of the 100 Languages of Children, participants will investigate how children can express their thinking and construct knowledge through many different forms—observing, experimenting, drawing, creating, building, writing, and caring for living things. Using a transdisciplinary lens, educators will explore how art and environmental science can come together naturally through children's questions and encounters with the living world. Rather than separating learning into subjects, the workshop considers how a single experience—examining a leaf, observing an insect, building a shelter, planting a seed, or noticing seasonal change—can become a pathway into scientific investigation, artistic expression, language, mathematics, and responsible action. Participants will engage in hands-on investigations and creative provocations inspired by the natural environment, while considering the role of the educator as researcher, facilitator, and co-learner. We will explore how open-ended materials, thoughtful questions, and carefully designed environments can encourage children to notice, wonder, hypothesize, represent, collaborate, and revisit their ideas. The workshop also highlights the garden as more than a place to study nature—it can become a third teacher, a living classroom that supports relationships, responsibility, agency, and a deeper sense of connection to the environment. Educators will leave with practical strategies for designing Reggio-inspired, IB-aligned learning experiences that make children's thinking visible and invite multiple ways of knowing, communicating, and expressing understanding. Come ready to observe, wonder, create, and see the natural world through many languages.