Theresa Warfield set the table with ceramic plates and glass bowls. Homemade bean soup came in a bowl with a ladle; turkey sandwiches and sliced oranges on plates with tongs.

Warfield and her husband, Jimi, sat down to lunch with their kids, Jamie, 5, and Virginia, 2 — and the other 10 toddlers and preschoolers who attend The Weable Garden, the Warfields' home-based child care in Kent.

"I wanted mealtime to be very special," Warfield said. "It's easy to make it like a cafeteria lunch line where you're just shoveling out food. But that's not respectful.

"I wanted to foster a sense of family at meals with every child included. They pass the dishes, they serve themselves and decide how much to take, they pour their own milk. It's not me in charge of everything." Give little kids glass? Expect preschoolers to serve food without a disaster? Is she crazy?

Instead of chaos, however, the Warfield table is calm. The kids discuss an impending birthday party. No one jumps up and down; the adults and kids all munch together.

The Warfields' mealtime approach is modeled on the schools of Reggio Emilia, a hot trend in early-childhood education. Usually reserved for child-care centers — most of them private and upscale — the Puget Sound Educational Service District has been applying Reggio Emilia principles with its Head Start family child-care providers for about five years.

"We've seen an incredible transformation in the environment and the way child-care providers see the children and themselves," said Gina Lewis, child development coordinator for the district's Head Start. "To me, Reggio Emilia is the best example of what child care and early childhood education should be."

City, not a person

Reggio Emilia is a city in northern Italy famed for the innovative approach of its publicly funded preschools. It gained a following in the United States about 15 years ago, and its child-centered methods continue to spread.

Several Seattle-area child-care centers use Reggio Emilia, but Lewis thinks the Burien-based district is the only group of family providers embracing the approach. It is one of a handful of agencies that contract with home-based providers for Head Start.

The dozen providers, including Warfield, also serve families not enrolled in the federally funded program for low-income children.

Much of what seems innovative in Reggio's center-based program, such as creating a homelike setting, maintaining a close relationship with parents and keeping children with the same teacher for three years, already occurs naturally in family child care, Lewis said. It seemed like such a good fit that Lewis and her colleague Wanda Billheimer now lead Reggio workshops at local child-care conferences.

Reggio Emilia starts with an image of children as curious, capable and strong, and designs its curriculum around that. (Take lunch as an example: Kids are capable of using real dishes, so why patronize them with plastic? Treat children with respect, and in return, they'll try to be careful.)

The Reggio Emilia schools were influenced by early-childhood educators and researchers such as Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget but developed a unique approach, said Louise Boyd Cadwell, the St. Louis-based author of "Bringing Reggio Emilia Home" and "Bringing Learning to Life: The Reggio Approach to Early Childhood Education."

While Reggio programs share certain elements (emphasis on art, flexible curriculum, extensive documentation), it's not a one-size-fits-all prescription.

"It's really about our values and our culture," said Lewis, who visited Reggio Emilia on a study tour. "You have to make it your own. There's no certification. It's more of an attitude."

Change in approach

At The Weable Garden, down came the decorative posters with unknown children and cartoony characters. "None of that means anything to anybody," Warfield said. Now, the walls feature "pictures of people who are actually here. These are our stories." Brightly colored walls and furniture gave way to natural wood, wicker baskets and neutral tones, as Warfield dismissed the "it doesn't look like learning if it's not red, yellow and blue everything" standard.

"If you really respect and value children, then you're going to have a beautiful environment because they deserve it," Lewis said.

Reggio Emilia can clash with the new emphasis on "kindergarten readiness" skills, since it offers no set lesson plans. Reggio supporters say it's the difference between viewing children as full of ideas to build on versus empty vessels for adults to instruct.

"It's about exploring the world together and supporting children's thinking rather than just giving them ready-made answers," Cadwell explained. "Reggio Emilia is about full-blown human potential and how you support that in both intellectual and creative terms."

Warfield hung a large bulletin board with children's pictures and a sign that says, "Celebrating who we are right now."

A traditional preschool lesson might focus on bears by setting out bear books and adding teddy bears to a play area. With Reggio Emilia, the question is, "What is it about bears that really interests the kids? What about bears do they want to know?," Lewis said. Depending on how children respond, teachers might focus on what bears eat, why they hibernate or how bears use their claws.

"There's a lot of communication between children and the teacher," Lewis said. "Reggio Emilia sees teachers and children as co-learners and co-teachers."

Warfield, who also has two older sons, ages 13 and 15, said she stepped back when 2-year-old Roman Nancarrow-Iglesias kept cutting up paper with scissors.

"He's not trying to making anything," she said. "He rips paper all apart, happily recycles the pieces and gets another sheet."

Before, she would have discouraged it as wasteful. Now, she sees it as his way of mastering a new tool and controlling materials.

When kids draw a picture — art supplies are always out — she'll ask the story behind the sketch, then take down dictation.

"Adults really have to resist stepping in and saying, 'It has to look this way,' " Warfield said. "There's not a lot of support when you're not sending home, say, little pink bunnies [crafts]."

That makes it even more important to document the subtle developmental steps that parents might otherwise miss while kids are in child care, Warfield said. She keeps extensive folders on every child with artwork and stories. She often takes snapshots of the kids and writes a description of what the child was doing.

One board posted with pictures and a typed narrative highlighted a moment that could easily go unnoticed in a more rushed setting. Nancarrow-Iglesias was working quietly at the table with crayons. "When I came over, I saw that he had pulled out only the rainbow crayons," Warfield wrote. "And he wasn't simply marking them on his paper; he had made them into a train end to end. 'Choo choo,' he said."

"I really like that they're not being drilled," said parent Lucy Stensgard, whose 14-month-old son, Jeremiah, attends The Weable Garden. "It's not a teacher sitting down and saying 'We're going to learn this.' It's letting the child lead that."

Stephanie Dunnewind: sdunnewind@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2091.