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W: Wellbeing of each child is vital
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E: Education for each child is required |
C: Child empowerment is essential |
A: Acceptance for each child is unconditional |
R: Routes to learning are many |
| E: Empathy for the child’s needs is vital |
The Learning Concept |
Our early childhood care curriculum is founded on the Reggio approach to learning, Te Whariki i.e. New Zealand Early Childhood care curriculum and the Australian early years curriculum.
The Reggio approach to learning believes that all children are creative with talents specific to each individual. The concept stresses that children are very resourceful if they are given the freedom to express themselves freely in all possible ways. Our curriculum’s core value emphasizes that all children possess individual talents and these need to be brought out consciously through the skills of the teachers and the facilities provided within the school surroundings. The environment both at school and at home is very important under the Reggio approach to learning. Access to resources which provide tactile stimulation is a key feature of this learning process. Children's minds need to be stimulated on a daily basis to enable them to constantly learn something new. Coupled with the Reggio approach our curriculum aims to achieve the New Zealand Ministry of Education's aspiration about early childhood education:
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To grow up as competent
and confident learners and communicators,
healthy in mind, body, and spirit,
secure in their sense of belonging
and in the knowledge that they make
a valued contribution to society.
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The Reggio Emilia approach to learning is named after a town in Northern Italy where this form of early childhood learning originated. Today, the Reggio approach to learning is widely admired and accepted in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The approach believes that children have their own language in which they express themselves, and all children are talented and. resourceful if they are given the freedom of expression and resources of communication. Our curriculum has been developed with this fundamental approach to learning. Some key aspects of the Reggio approach to learning incorporated in our day to day activities at our pre-schools are:
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Children have the potential to express their creativity in various forms of languages be it drawing, painting, clay work, story-telling, craft or oral expressions. |
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Children need a supportive environment in order to bring out their potential in terms of creativity and resourcefulness. |
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Children's activities are not to be set by the clock but permitted to flow from one activity to another. |
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Interaction and collaboration between teachers, the students and the parents is essential. |
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New ideas find acceptance by teachers and refinement of those ideas are to be left to the child who can re-visit the ideas and things connected, again and again. |
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The environment provides the stimulation to think and express. Variety of media can be used to express. |
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Observation, recording of a child's learning is not necessarily an assessment of his or her abilities. |
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Our early childhood education curriculum incorporates the broad principles recommended under Te Whariki:
a) Empowerment
b) Holistic Development
c) Family and Community
d) Relationships
Our school curriculum seeks to develop the links between the early childhood years by creating reciprocal, responsive and happy relationships for the child with people, places and things thus aiding the learning process in all years to come. |
