"Prendi e scopri" (“Take and discover”)

The importance of spaces as learning environments is crucial, and regards not only teaching, but also anyone who designs spaces to be used by the youngest generations. Over time, new needs regarding education and learning methods (especially in more complicated contexts) have increasingly shifted attention to the importance of the physical and social environment in stimulating effective learning.

Designing a stimulating educational space can improve concentration and promote active participation: it can certainly stimulate more alert and involved participation.

These projects, which converge on the word space, have already involved the Tolomeo Museum and its atelier; the Museum works constantly with the other departments of the Cavazza Institute, including the Educational Consulting Service.

Specifically, it is involved in interdisciplinary projects regarding reading spaces, and especially environments in which the space is employed to promote reading, in preschools as well as in libraries.

Among these is the project linked to CEPELL (Center for Books and Reading): “Prendi e scopri” (managed by the Hamelin Association).

The aim of “Prendi e scopri" is to promote reading as an essential learning, play, and esthetic experience for children 0-6 years old, as well as their parents and the adults who work with them. The key element of “Prendi e scopri" is the game book, which isn’t limited to passive reading, but instead becomes something that stimulates reading experiences from earliest childhood by means of surprise and wonder. The game book stimulates multisensory physical involvement and the significant relationship among infants and adults, who read and play together in a shared space. We base this experience on the idea of the book brought into play and enhancing the reading experience by involving the body’s entire sensory apparatus. Starting from a typical illustrated album, a wonderful experience is invented, with dialog between the book’s space and reading space, creating relationships between the game book and objects, methods, and materials. The reading space engages the entire body and involves senses other than just sight.

Specifically, “Prendi e scopri" went beyond typical reading situations, trying to find places with greatest need in places of encounter with books and reading. It did this by bringing the best books for children aged 0-6 to spaces where children usually gather but where access to books is still limited due to distance, lack of reading opportunity, or conditions of social-educational poverty. As the Hamelin Association writes, “the project’s aim is to build networks of experts who operate in various territories, creating new and permanent cultural outposts, promoting the importance of reading from earliest childhood, pursuing these activities and stimulating awareness even after the project concludes. One of the principal aspects of “Prendi e scopri" is the training of parents and people who see and work with children on a daily basis.”

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