Reggio Emilia Aotearoa New Zealand

30/09/2026

All the best for your new school year. Thank you for sharing.

25/09/2026

Engaged meaningful experiences are critical for our children’s health and well-being. Play is at the heart of children’s living and growing.

14/09/2026

REANZ Conference | 9–11 October

The Mauri of Materials is set to be a treasure trove of ideas, inspiration and opportunity. Whether you teach in primary settings or work with young children in early childhood education, there will be something here for you.

Be energised by inspiring keynote presentations and the stories of teachers sharing their experiences, thinking and practice. Come ready to explore, connect and discover new possibilities for your own teaching.

Alongside speakers from Reggio Emilia and Australia, participants will take part in hands-on workshops. Here are three workshops that you will be able to participate in that bring the joy, curiosity and discovery of materials to life.

Dr Johanna Claus, a German music educator, dance artist, researcher and Teaching Fellow at the University of Waikato, will lead the workshop ‘Sticks & Stones: Dancing and Making Music with Natural Materials’.

Through playful exploration, Johanna invites us to discover how natural materials can teach us about rhythm, movement, creativity and connection—and open up new possibilities for making, moving and learning together.

Mari Ropata Te Hei is a renowned weaver and the conceptual designer of the cover artwork for Te Whāriki. In her workshop, ‘Ringa Tōhau Nui’ (Busy Hands), Mari will share her knowledge, skills and experience of weaving, inviting participants to explore the ways that busy hands bring people together to create, develop and work as one.

Weaving a whāriki is physically demanding and deeply relational. Through this hands-on experience, participants will consider how these connections can inform our own teaching and learning environments, creating opportunities for more meaningful connection, collaboration and shared learning.

Dr Rachel Denee and Sarah Probine will present a hands-on workshop about how teachers can support infants’ and toddlers’ curiosity and learning through interactions with materials.

Participants will explore materials themselves and reflect on how teachers’ actions—listening, responding, and intentionally extending children’s exploration—can create opportunities for inquiry and meaning-making.

Please go to reanz.org for further information and registration.

11/09/2026

Just in case you are wondering why there aren't more photos shared from the settings in Melbourne, you'll be interested to know that phones aren't allowed in classrooms.

Our last day of the Melbourne study group took us to two sites.

The early childhood teachers went to MLC Kindle, whilst the primary teachers visited Princess Hill Primary.

The Pprimary teachers were warmly welcomed and taken on a tour through the classes. It was a joy to observe the children at work, some engaging in their own self directed learning, others working on inquiries with friends and teachers.

This years school wide focus has been on 'Connection' and has involved some very complex projects that have connected them to the school and wider community and the history of the area and it’s connections to the indigenous people. The notion of ‘connection’ has also spread across curriculum subjects with math, literacy and sciences strongly present.

While the primary teachers were visiting here, the early childhood teachers visited MLC Early Learning Centre, originally named Melbourne Ladies College.

Our visit to MLC Kindle offered this year’s ECE teachers in the study group a valuable opportunity to slow down, notice with intention, and reflect on how research, environments, relationships, materials, and rituals can nurture a culture of enchantment, fantasy, wonder and belonging.

Through the lenses of slow pedagogy, wayfinding and the arts, the visit invited educators to consider how children are supported to linger with ideas, revisit places and stories, follow imaginative pathways, and express their thinking through the 100 languages.

The culture of research at MLC Kindle was immediately evident. Children’s learning was made visible through carefully documented threads of thinking and developing theories, with many long-term inquiries drawing our attention and inviting deeper reflection.

At the time of our visit, the children were preparing for an art exhibition to be held that weekend. Each child will submit an individual artwork, with each class contributing a collaborative piece to be auctioned in support of the children’s chosen charity for the year—a beautiful example of democracy in action.
Intentionality was evident in the way educators valued and honoured children’s work, allowing learning to be seen and celebrated within an environment as the third teacher. Each space we entered felt carefully considered, highlighting the role of documentation, aesthetics, and thoughtful design in inviting, inspiring and engaging children.

Ultimately, this visit was an invitation to look again at the everyday with fresh eyes. It encouraged educators to notice the quiet richness of children’s learning, the power of beautiful and intentional environments, and the value of slowing down so that imagination, relationships, and learning can unfold with depth, care, and wonder.

So that's a wrap! The 28th year of the Melbourne Study Group concludes. Teachers have been inspired, challenged and the important work they engage in everyday, validated. Thank you to all the wonderful participants who made this a very special experience.

We look forward to the September 2027 study group and connecting again with our warm and generous friends in Melbourne.

Send a message to learn more

10/09/2026

We are looking forward to our conference, The Mauri of Materials, taking place 9–11 October at Kristin School, Albany, Auckland. The theme for Friday evening is Crossing Boundaries.

Ngā Takahanga – Footprints: Crossing Boundaries: Grounded in Place, Open to Possibility

Drawing on her 25-year relationship with Reggio Emilia, Brenda offers a Māori perspective on what it means to cross boundaries of country, culture and educational tradition. She explores how these crossings can impact mauri, transform thinking, deepen our understanding of relationships and open new possibilities.

Brenda has been involved in Māori language revitalisation and Māori education formore than 30 years. Her relationship with Reggio Emilia began in 1999 and has continued to challenge and enrich her thinking about education, culture, language and identity.

Kate Mount, Chairperson of Reggio Emilia Australia Exchange, will then explore how relationships between Australia, Aotearoa and Reggio Emilia can be strengthened over time.

What does it mean to cross boundaries in our thinking, our relationships and the way we see the world? And how might these relationships create new possibilities for learning and practice?

We look forward to sharing this evening of reflection, conversation and connection with you.

09/09/2026

Our study tour to Melbourne continues … The primary teachers were especially pleased to visit St John’s Catholic Primary, to hear how they have developed their overall approach to curriculum design, using the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia as a central idea.

To begin we were invited to clay and other materials to think about our experiences through the week.

It was ten years ago that they encountered the ideas from Reggio, and over the time since, they have created and recreated documents that have supported teachers to have a shared understanding of how ‘we do things at St John’s’. These documents support new teachers as they join the teaching team, to get acquainted and understand what it is to teach at St John’s.
Over a three week cycle based on the data they have created and ‘made sense’ of together, planning is undertaken for change and development. Each week, one becomes the focus of the planning meeting.

The classroom experiences are carefully designed for children to engage in experiential learning that relate to the three areas identified above. This classroom space is supported by a teacher, referred to as the ‘influencer’, while at the second teacher undertakes intentional learning with groups of children.

This visit was a great opportunity to hear how teachers have navigated bringing Reggio home to the Australian context in a primary school setting.

Thanks St John's for your generosity and friendship.

07/09/2026

Our study group to Melbourne once again had the pleasure of working with Chris Celada and Margo Hobba. These two very knowledgeable and talented teachers, brought the wonders of using materials to better understand the many, many aspects of the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia.

The workshop ‘Making Sense’ through research supported participants to think about how human beings construct knowledge through building relationships between our sensory bodies, minds and the material world.
We were invited to use close observation to see more clearly what it was we were ‘seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing’, as if for the first time.

Margo and Chris’ workshop last year was the catalyst for one of the participants to begin a year long relationship with water colour painting. A medium that had been new to her. She gifted a bookmark to each of this years participants to record three words that represented their experience, as a memento of their time together. Thank you Chrissy for your thoughtful gift.

The curious teacher, the creative teacher, the questioning teacher, the observant teacher. This workshop brought all those elements of ‘us’ together. Thank you Chrissy and Margo.

07/09/2026

Our registrations are open for our Study Group to Reggio Emilia 2027.
Check out more information and how to register by following this link https://www.reanz.org/campaigns/view-campaign/HdBKF4VVp6Zayv34mAuWZ5CIRVaATVp8-vkudwDzYvBjBVVJpKLrEYtKnPZivHwrX1lPOK3lerUTpL_aQlWEnAtAO-w3FVvz

06/09/2026

More stories from the Melbourne Study group. It is always such a delight to meet up with Leanne Mitts from Pope Road Kindergarten. She has joined us been a friend to REANZ over many years, and our groups will have been visiting for something like 20 years.

Leanne, and the Pope Road teaching team, have created an environment where children discover and encounter possibilities to work on projects together. Leanne shared the ways that they document learning, from collecting ‘raw data’, using this to work out what the next possibilities might be, to drawing it into pedagogical documentation. A term used when teachers make sense of what they are seeing, hearing and experiencing with children to better understand the learning that is occurring.

Each year, the older children, create a memory of their time at the kindergarten. What this might be, isn’t known until the fourth term, where the children come together to explore the possibilities of the memory. This year, the children have had a focus on ‘kindness’ and this over arching concept has taken them to places that hadn’t been envisaged when it was first proposed.

The children will work on the project throughout term 4. It will be interesting to see whether the end of year project will focus on an aspect of kindness, or something else entirely.

A teacher looks for possibilities each and everyday. Possibilities that open up learning and inject energy and a sense of purpose to our everyday. We could see this in the stories Leanne shared with us. Thank you Leanne!

A surprise for Leanne, was that a parent of one of our participants went to Pope Road Kindergarten back in the 60's. Now that is a first for our visits!

06/09/2026

The participants in the Melbourne study group have reminded us of the impact that robust, rigorous professional development can have on our commitment to teaching—and how it can re-energise us, encouraging us to reflect on what we do best and why.

Our October conference, The Mauri of Materials, held from Friday evening, 9 October, to Sunday, 11 October at 1:30pm, offers another opportunity for teachers to be engaged, challenged and stretched in their thinking.

With international speakers joining us online from Reggio Emilia and presenters from across Australia joining us in person, the conference will invite us to explore and deepen our thinking about materials and their role in teaching and learning.

The experience will include practical workshops, Teachers Telling Stories, and focused conversation groups exploring work-specific areas of interest.

We hope you will join us for this opportunity to connect, question, reflect and be inspired alongside other educators.

Please join us! Register at www.reanz.org