Overview

Our Approach to Learning

At All Souls School, our emphasis on play-based learning demonstrates how young children learn best through exploration, social engagement, and meaningful experiences. Teachers thoughtfully design classrooms as learning environments based on children’s developmental abilities. Teachers co-construct curriculum with the children, reflecting their interests and inviting them to investigate ideas through building, storytelling, creative art, movement, music, and imaginative play.

Our work is inspired by the Reggio Emilia concept of the “Hundred Languages of Children,” which recognizes that children express their thinking in many ways. At All Souls, children share their ideas through drawings, construction, conversation, and collaborative play.

Teachers document children’s work with photographs, videos, anecdotal notes, and displays, making children’s thinking visible and allowing learning to be revisited and deepened over time. As children explore and work together with their teachers’ support and guidance, they develop skills in early literacy, mathematics, emotional regulation, and social dynamics. In this environment, play is serious work and enables children to grow into confident, curious life-long learners.