EY1 Learning Exhibition ‘The Traces We Leave Behind’
SHC Article SHC Early years SHC Story“Beyond the wall, there is always beyond.” – Loris Malaguzzi, an Italian educator and psychologist, best known as the founder of the Reggio Emilia approach.
The concept of ‘beyond’ not only guided this project, but continues to shape our pedagogy and long-term investigations within EY1. It reminds us to look beyond quick answers, to listen closely to children’s thinking, and to allow ideas the time and space to evolve in unexpected ways.
In Early Years, learning rarely moves in straight lines. Children return to ideas again and again, revisiting them through movement, conversation, sound, drawing and play. What may first appear simple often holds layers of thinking underneath. Our role is not to rush children towards answers, but to create the conditions where thinking can deepen, evolve and transform over time.
At our EY1 Exhibition: The Traces We Leave Behind, families were invited into this ongoing journey of learning across the EY1 classes. The exhibition was not designed as a display of finished products, but rather as documentation of children’s thinking in motion. It revealed the traces children leave behind as they observe, experiment, collaborate, question and make meaning of the world around them.
Children Learn Through Exploration
At the heart of our Early Years philosophy is the belief that children learn best through exploration. Young children need time, space and meaningful opportunities to investigate ideas through play, inquiry and first-hand experiences. Learning happens not only in outcomes, but in the process itself: in the testing of theories, the revisiting of experiences and the countless moments of discovery along the way.
Throughout the project, children explored ideas through many interconnected experiences. A movement became a drawing. A sound became a mark. A piece of fabric became a story, a shelter or a wave. Each encounter extended children’s thinking further, allowing one language of expression to flow naturally into another.
Music in the Lines. The Sounds of Our Thinking
Music became a powerful presence in the classroom and one of the many languages explored throughout the project. As children listened closely to sounds, rhythms and melodies, they responded through drawing and mark-making, transforming sound into lines, shapes and patterns. Listening became visible as children expressed their thinking in creative and meaningful ways.
These experiences revealed how deeply children observe the world around them. Through drawing, children were not simply creating pictures; they were translating experience into another language, expressing feelings, movement and sound through marks on paper.
Seen, Unseen and Left Behind. Holding onto Something What Cannot Be Held.
Movement also became a powerful tool for communication and inquiry. Children explored large gestures and tiny micromovements, becoming increasingly aware of how their bodies could express ideas, emotions and stories.
Some movements left visible traces through photography, dance and graphics. Others disappeared the moment they happened, yet remained deeply present in the children’s memories and understanding. The body became both a tool for exploration and a language in itself.
When Fabrics Become Something Else. Holding, Transforming, Becoming.
Fabric emerged as one of the most transformative materials within the project. It wrapped, suspended, connected and moved. It became boats, shelters, costumes, waves and spaces for light and shadow.
What mattered most was not what the fabric was, but what it could become. With each new encounter, children reimagined its possibilities. Through collaboration, movement and sensory exploration, they discovered that materials are never fixed; they evolve alongside imagination.
The Traces Children Leave Behind
What families encountered during the exhibition were traces of transformation, of becoming and of learning. Traces of questions, relationships, experimentation and thinking. Every mark, form, movement and gesture carried evidence of children making sense of their experiences.
The Traces We Leave Behind reflects what we value deeply in Early Years education: curiosity, creativity, collaboration and the belief that children communicate their thinking in many different ways.
Most importantly, the exhibition invited us all to pause and look more closely, not only at what children create, but at the quiet poetry of how they think, wonder, revisit and grow. Within these traces live fragments of their theories, relationships, movements and imaginations. They remind us that children are not simply learning about the world, they are constantly teaching us new ways to see it.
Shrewsbury International School Bangkok City Campus