At Wildflower, we believe that children's learning should be presented by the children and nurtured by the teachers. It's important for children to develop their own interest and love for learning by openly exploring their environment. Rather than telling children what to do and how to do it, we aim to present children with a variety of materials and questions to allow them to discover their own interests. And, because children's interests change often, it's our goal to change and wonder/learn with them while regularly exposing new ideas to help develop their innate curiosity. We also value differing learning styles and recognize that each child, parent, and teacher have their own skills to bring to the education process. 

The Cycle of Inquiry (COI)

The Cycle of Inquiry (COI) is an essential tool for emergent curriculum, as it embraces the ways children learn best. It's a tool for you to use to plan curriculum in response to children's curiosity and questioning, acknowledging the problems children encounter, and taking seriously the solutions they hypothesize in relation to their experiences. 

Teaching children using an emergent curriculum requires teachers to be empowered to make intentional and creative curriculum choices in the moment and approach the idea of learning cooperatively with the children. Emergent curriculum is described as a continuous cycle of ongoing learning opportunities that emerge from teachers' careful observations of children's interests and thinking. It values teachers' inquiry into children's thinking (attaching meaning of children's play and explorations) and their decisions to create next steps for learning activities based on that inquiry and questioning with children. 

The COI starts with documenting observations of children's learning to see their thinking, then continually follows a cycle of inquiry to expand on children's interests over time.