Our History
The Grand Rapids Early Discovery Center started as a child care center on the campus of Aquinas College in the 1980’s for faculty and staff of the college. Over time, the role of early childhood services became a focal point for examining issues in early childhood education in general, and the Aquinas College School of Education in particular. This was matched by an interest in families of the AQCDC to see their own children’s Reggio-inspired learning experiences continue into the primary grade levels. They began to look for ways to continue these opportunities and, in the year 2000, a partnership was formed that realized the Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center, a public charter K-5 school. The AQCDC moved to reside with the GRCDC in the St. Adalbert school building, complimenting the public charter’s K-5 grade levels with its own infant through Pre-K program, near the heart of the city in a diverse and historical setting. This brought together a public/ private relationship around the common vision to provide reform and dialogue around child education with families, professionals, and the community of West Michigan.
In 2012, a group of parents embraced the program by forming a non-profit. The name changed to the Grand Rapids Early Discovery Center and we moved to our current location at 515 Jefferson Ave SE.
Our logo: a process with children
After eight years in our current building, and some positive changes to the organization, it was time for a fresh new look! We value our community and strive to be culturally and racially competent so it was important to us that we look locally to help with this process. We contracted with Better World Agency, a local, minority-owned agency specializing in non-profit design and consulting. Unique to Reggio-inspired early learning programs is respect for the 100 languages of children, so we wanted to include the children in creating the design. Children are central to everything at the GREDC and creating a logo was no exception. Rich discussions took place with the children about our desire to create a new logo for our sign. The children talked about our sign daily as we walked passed it to our playground. We followed their interest in the sign and discussed the purpose of signs (providing information) and symbols (representing something else). We asked the children what information would we want people to know about our school? How will they know this is a school? How would we represent our name? During several weeks we engaged the children in various conversations and also asked them to creatively express their ideas, often by drawing. By keeping the children as the primary focus, we arrived at our new logo:
The flower
As the children discussed these questions they seemed to really focus on the word “discovery” in our school’s name. They began sharing the many things they have discovered through their investigations at school, “I discovered how plants grow!” shared one little girl. Upon hearing this a little boy drew a flower to represent his favorite discovery. Every day over 2 weeks, this boy re-created this picture and passed out his pictures to several teachers, telling them how much he loves coming to his school. His flower became an integral part of our logo!
The bee
The bee on our logo was created by another student who told us, “My favorite study was the bee study when I discovered all about bees!” She drew a black and white picture of a bee, which was later colored in by her younger sister in a different classroom, making this bee the product of a collaborative effort.
The font
Often, early childhood centers will use lots of “kid” fonts. This is not the case for our logo. The fine serif font used is inspired by classic Italian typesets, similar to what you can see in many structures and monuments in Reggio Emilia. Furthermore, by incorporating fonts that remind us of the renaissance, we are making a statement about the type of work that we do: one that is student-centered and constructivist and using self-directed, experiential learning in relationship-driven environments.
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The Reggio Emilia Approach
The Reggio Emilia approach is an innovative and inspiring approach to early childhood education. This educational philosophy is focused on preschool and primary education and is described as child centered and constructivist.
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Emergent Curriculum
Emergent curriculum develops from exploring ideas that are socially relevant, intellectually engaging and personally meaningful to children.
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Our Classrooms
Each classroom at the GREDC is thoughtfully structured to foster the development, thought and creativity of each child.
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