Thomastown Community Kindergarten

We would like to carry out this project to provide an alternative and holistic form of early years education to our local community.

The project – Thomastown Community Kindergarten – is a Steiner Waldorf based Kindergarten and its objectives are to provide a warm, nurturing environment to children aged 2.5+ - like a home away from home. The main objective of Steiner Waldorf education is to educate the whole child, head, heart and hands. The Steiner Waldorf early years curriculum is broad and balances the needs of children. By hosting EVS volunteers at the project, our objectives will be to ensure our volunteers have a positive experience at the project, their learning is maximised and facilitated by the project and at the end of their placement they will have increased their awareness of the role as a European citizen and their employability.

It achieves its objectives by encouraging/ facilitating learning through play, emphasis on nature-based play, the maintenance of daily and weekly rhythms and unhurried learning.

Some of the issues and needs, Thomastown Community Kindergarten is seeking to address include:

We feel this type of child-centered early years education is particularly important considering the growing challenges of modern times when there are heightened concerns about the amount of time children spend engaged with screen media. At our Kindergarten you will see children climbing trees, digging and planting, playing in the sandpit or building, dressing up or playing imaginatively with natural toys, helping to prepare meals and lay the table. Inside the children enjoy listening to well-loved tales and nature stories and singing songs together.

Even at this young age the importance of informal learning is recognised. For example, formal learning of the three R’s does not feature in the Steiner Early Years curriculum in the belief that a child will learn these skills more effectively if he/she has had plenty of time and opportunity to develop socially, emotionally and physically first in a creative, secure, enabling and harmonious environment. In our Kindergarten, the foundation skills in literacy and numeracy are laid down through an environment rich in hands on activity and play and where language and communication are enabled through a rich oral tradition.

This learning environment for pre-school children is not widely available throughout the world. The rich experience that a volunteer will encounter by being placed in this environment will expose them to a facet of childcare and early years education that they may not see in most childcare facilities or learn in college. It will fulfill the objective regarding their relevance to the labour market and their contribution to a cohesive society. It is a great opportunity for increased learning especially for volunteers who have already experience in this career path or wish to enter it. As the activity time of this project is 7 months there is also considerable time for language learning and cultural exchange.