The Environment Is the Third Teacher. What That Means for Your Child's Wall.
There is a particular thing a child does when something catches their attention.
They stop. They crouch down, or press their face closer, or go very still in that way small children go still when they are thinking hard. They have questions they do not have words for yet. They might point. They might not.
Something in the world has claimed them, for a moment, completely.
Italian educator Loris Malaguzzi believed moments like this were not distractions from learning. They were learning.
A Hundred Languages
Malaguzzi founded the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education in northern Italy after the Second World War. At the centre of it was a deceptively simple idea: children are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. They arrive already full. Full of ways of thinking, questioning, and making sense of things.
He called these the hundred languages of children. Drawing is one. So is clay, and movement, and music, and the careful arrangement of stones by size. So is crouching on a path to study a beetle for five minutes. Each one is a legitimate way of understanding the world, and the job of the adults around a child is not to replace these languages with more correct ones, but to protect them. To give them room.
The environment, he said, is the third teacher. Alongside the child’s own instincts and the adults in their lives, what surrounds a child as they grow is part of their education. What they can see. What they can reach. What they can question.
Not Just for Schools
Most of us do not have a dedicated art studio at home. We do not have an atelierista, someone with an arts background whose job in a Reggio school is simply to be present with children as they make and explore, taking what they are doing seriously.
But we do create small environments for children every day. A bedroom. A nursery. A corner of the sitting room where the books live and the toys are kept.
These spaces are not neutral.
They are full of things a child will look at hundreds of times before they are old enough to read. The question Malaguzzi would ask is: do those things reward attention? Do they open questions? Do they invite a child to look more closely at the world?
What I Make and Why
I work from my studio in Somerset, drawing creatures that catch my attention.
I drew a cockchafer beetle because one May evening I was working late with my desk lamp on and something hit my window so hard I had to go and look. I
t was enormous and brown and completely unbothered by me, and I stood there thinking: what on earth is that?
I had to find out about it. I had to draw it.
That one drawing became an entire insect alphabet, because once you start looking at insects properly, there is no reasonable stopping point.
The acorn weevil is in that alphabet. So is the juniper shield bug. I put them there because they exist, because they are extraordinary, and because a child who has seen an acorn weevil on their wall will recognise the word when they encounter it later, and feel the particular pleasure of already knowing something strange and true.
These are not educational prints in any structured sense. There is no lesson attached. But they are curious. They are drawn by someone who stopped and looked for a long time before picking up a pencil.
A print like that on a wall is not decoration. It is an invitation. A particular creature that a child will come back to, and point at, and ask about, and forget, and rediscover, and ask about again.
That, I think, is exactly what Malaguzzi meant.
A Note on the Italian
Malaguzzi built his whole world in Italian, in a small northern city, Reggio Emilia, where the schools are full of clay and colour and things worth looking at closely.
I have had a bilingual English and Italian alphabet for a while. It sat quietly until this week, when it suddenly felt relevant in a way I had not expected.
In Italian, a seahorse is Il Cavalluccio Marino. The little horse of the sea. A ladybird is La Coccinella. A rainbow is L’Arcobaleno, the arch of colours.
These are not just translations. They are different ways of seeing the same thing.
A child who knows that a seahorse is also a little horse of the sea has two languages for the same creature, and that doubling is, I think, precisely what Malaguzzi meant by a hundred languages. Each new word is a new way of looking.
You can find the English and Italian alphabet here: Printable English Italian Girls Nursery Print
Why This Is in the News Right Now
The Princess of Wales recently visited Reggio Emilia. She spent two days in preschools and studios, took part in a clay workshop, and let a newt crawl on her hand in a school garden. She said: in London, we have newts like this too.
She has been working on early childhood development for years, and she clearly found in Malaguzzi’s ideas something that confirmed what she already believed. That the earliest years matter more than we usually admit. That what surrounds a child shapes them. That curiosity is not a skill you teach.
It is something you protect.
The same week, her centre published a new guide called Foundations for Life, on social and emotional development in the early years. It is worth reading if this interests you.
Things Worth Noticing
I print on archival fine art paper. I make each print to order in Somerset.
But more than that, I hope the prints give children something worth noticing.
A child does not need to memorise facts about an acorn weevil or a black hole. They only need the feeling that the world is full of interesting things worth looking at closely.
If a child pauses on their way past one of my prints and asks what a juniper shield bug is, then the print has already done something important.
Browse the Insect Alphabet
Browse the British Woodland Alphabet
Browse the English and Italian Alphabet
Find Out More
The Loris Malaguzzi International Centre, Reggio Emilia — the home of the Reggio Emilia approach, with information about visits, ateliers, and the educational philosophy behind it all.
https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/
The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood — founded by the Princess of Wales in 2021, with research and resources on early childhood development.
https://centreforearlychildhood.org
Foundations for Life — the Centre’s guide to social and emotional development in the early years.
https://centreforearlychildhood.org/help-resources/resource-hub/
