Kiddiwinkles offer a practical child-centred approach where children are respected as individuals and encouraged to learn and develop at their own pace.
Theory of Mixed Age
Mixed age play offers opportunities for learning and development not present in play among children of the same age. Research shows that mixing of children of different ages in early childhood centres has many advantages. It has an impact on a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development. When two year olds play with five year olds they use more complex forms of symbolic play or pretending.
Mixed age play can enlarge a child’s vocabulary and their ability to empathise. A mixed age environment has a very stimulative effect on infants particularly. They can learn various social and cognitive skills from imitating preschool children, even from just watching them play and interact. The behaviour/play of older children offers role models for the younger children who receive more emotional support from older children than they would from children their own age.
Get To Know Us Better
Our Nature play vision
The rapidly changing global condition of children and childhood requires new collaborations with new approaches to all that we do with and for children. One area of change is the disconnection of children from the natural world. Children increasingly face challenging societal, technological and environmental conditions that are producing deteriorating trends in physical and mental health; at the same time, existing educational approaches and conditions are inadequate to enable them to meet and overcome these challenges, much less secure their future.
We want to transform our approach to environments, health, and early education.
Primary Care
Primary care giving is a process in which practitioners are focused on enabling close attachments, particularly with under two’s.
Practitioners have responsibility for establishing and maintaining close relationships with a small group of children and their families.
We are influenced by both the Pikler approach and inspired by the Reggio approach to early childcare learning.
