Abstract
The research has two objectives: to implement an educational project—based on colours and music—to promote emotional self-awareness in children aged 6 to 8; to investigate the connections which children spontaneously trace between music and colours (assuming that these connections are mediated by emotions). A growing number of projects have been developed in the field of social-emotional education (Wigesworth et al., 2016). Since the promotion of self-awareness is unlikely to be achieved within “traditional settings” (Goleman & Senge, 2014), the challenge is to adopt a nature-based approach (Carter, 2016). The research relies on two assumptions. The first concerns the connection between experiential activity and reflective thought: experiences are generative when accompanied by reflection (Dewey, 1938). The second assumption concerns the adoption of the emotional mediation hypothesis: music and colours are connected through emotional associations (Whiteford et al., 2018). The study is placed within an interpretive paradigm and utilizes the research with children methodology. The field research—a multiple case study—involved two Grade 2 classes. Data collection included video-recordings of the workshops and children’s drawings. Parental consent and child assent were obtained. Confidentiality, anonymity, and voluntariness were respected. Ethical approval was granted by Unibz Faculty of Education; ethical code was followed. Results show that creative experiences that connect outdoor spaces within indoor lessons, regularly followed by personal and group reflections, contribute to the building of emotional competence. This research suggests that the main educational interest for the associations between music and colour is that these are potentially generative for emotional self-awareness.