Reggio Emilia Part 2: Designing for Movement: When Children Flow Across Spaces

By: Dr. Cynthia DiCarlo, Louisiana State University

This six-part blog series highlights a visit to the Cinema School in Bologna, Italy and explores the shifts early childhood educators might consider when rethinking choice in their own programs. The school, directed by Beatrice Vitali, was toured in collaboration with ECEI researcher Marcella Terrusi of the University of Bologna. While many classrooms emphasize child choice within centers or activities, this school demonstrated what it looks like when choice is embedded into the design of the entire environment. Across this series, key structures—from movement across spaces to flexible routines—are examined with consideration for how these ideas might translate into practice in early childhood settings.

Designing for Movement: When Children Flow Across Spaces

In many early childhood settings, movement is tightly controlled. Children transition together, move as a group, and are often expected to remain within a single classroom space for most of the day. While these structures are often implemented for efficiency and management, they can also limit opportunities for children to make decisions about where and how they engage.

An alternative approach considers movement not as something to be managed, but as something to be designed.

In environments where choice is embedded into the structure, movement becomes a central mechanism through which children access learning. Rather than rotating through activities or waiting for transitions, children move across spaces based on interest, engagement, and social interaction. These spaces are intentionally designed to support different types of experiences, allowing children to navigate between them in meaningful ways. As illustrated below, environments are not confined to a single room, but extend across both indoor and outdoor spaces, each offering distinct opportunities for engagement.

Outdoor environments designed with open-ended materials support movement, exploration, and imaginative play across spaces.

Movement across environments also includes access to indoor spaces that support familiar, everyday experiences.

Indoor environments designed for dramatic play support social interaction and allow children to engage in familiar, everyday experiences.

These images highlight an important distinction. Movement is not simply about transitioning from one activity to another; it is about navigating between environments that offer fundamentally different types of learning experiences. Children are not being directed to move; they are moving with purpose. This type of movement is not unstructured. It is supported by clear organization, intentional design, and consistent adult presence within spaces. Adults remain within specific areas, while children move between them. This shifts responsibility in a way that allows children to take a more active role in their own learning.

Research suggests that environments which allow for increased autonomy and decision-making can support higher levels of engagement and sustained attention (DiCarlo & Ota, 2025). When movement is restricted, opportunities for this type of engagement may also be limited.

This raises an important consideration for practice:

How is movement currently structured in the classroom, and what opportunities do children have to move with purpose across different environments?

Reggio Emilia–inspired environments emphasize the importance of space, organization, and relationships in supporting children’s learning (Malaguzzi, 1993). When movement is intentionally designed, it becomes part of the learning process rather than a disruption to it. Teachers might consider small shifts, such as opening access to outdoor spaces, creating clearly defined areas that invite different types of play, or allowing children to move between spaces in ways that reflect their interests. These changes do not require a complete redesign, but they do require a shift in how movement is viewed.

Reggio Emilia Tenets in Practice

The design of movement across spaces reflects the environment as a third teacher, where physical layout supports exploration and access to different types of learning experiences (Santín & Torruella, 2017). Movement between spaces also emphasizes social relationships, as children engage with peers and adults across environments. Underlying this structure is an image of the child as capable of making decisions and navigating space independently.

References

DiCarlo, C. F., & Ota, C. (2025). Sustained attention in three-year-old children: The impact of teaching conditions and choice. Early Childhood Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-025-01985-w

Malaguzzi, L. (1993). For an education based on relationships. Young Children, 49(1), 9–12.

Santín, M. F., & Torruella, M. F. (2017). Reggio Emilia: An essential tool to develop critical thinking in early childhood. Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 6(1), 50–56. https://doi.org/10.7821/naer.2017.1.207

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Dr. Cynthia DiCarlo is a Professor and Program Coordinator of the Early Childhood Education at Louisiana State University and the Executive Director of the Early Childhood Education Institute www.lsu.edu/ecei

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