The Recent Situation of Japanese Children Care, Kindergarten Management and Training

Aika Yasunage, chairman of Doronko Education Instition (owns 134 Representative kindergartens in Japan).

10 years ago, the situation of kindergartens in Japan was same as that in China currently. Representative kindergarten includes children care and children education. Her kindergartens accept children from 57days until the children step into primary schools.

This photo was taken by the class teacher. This was a 1 year old girl tried to get herself some soup for lunch. That refers the key point is children need to learn how to develop life skills by themselves rather than adults do everything for them.

Every nursery doesn't have walls to separate classes. Children live and stay in the same room. Older children take care of young children and youngests learn from the older children. All the nurseries have fields and farms to provide rich environment for children. Around 90-120 children in each nursery. The age is from 57days until they go to study in the primary school.

The company has collaboration with various famous companys to provide children care for the staff's children. Their speciality encourages more people apply for jobs in those companys.

This is the first kindergarten to take this challenge.  Aika thinks every child should be equally receive education opportunity, including disabled children. For disabled children, they need to be respected by other children and understand how to ask help when they need assistance. On the other hand, healthy children need to understand individual difference and repect difference. In every nursery with SEN children, there are specialists such as psychologists to provide service for those children. For example, autism is normally diagonosed at age 3, but in those nurseries, psychologists can distinguish their special needs and provide support. Normally those kids have few hours with intervention support and the rest time still stay with other children. As a result, 3/4 of them could go to primary schools as same as other children.

This is parents-support center. Recently, Japanese government introduced a law that every kindergarten needs to set a.area like this. This is a good opportunity for new mothers to exchange ideas and understand kindergartens' daily work. The picture located on the right up corner is second-hand children clothes collection boxes. This is a effect strategy to attract more residents to be closer with her nurseries then they may generate ideas like my children should be here. Additionally, parents like to choose clothes from there to allow their children to play in the field.

Every April and September, the nursery organises children to plant and collect rice. Thus, children eat the rice they grow by themselves in the following year.

This is an interesting picture. The babies in the picture were 7 months. They clawed in the inside room originally, then they saw older children played outside so they clowed from inside to outside. This indicates our principle that children need to find out questions and explore the solutions by themselves. Teachers should not tell children what should do or what should not do. Teachers need to prepare and create a rich environment for children to explore.

When teachers develop their thinking, the kids will learn from teachers and develop their own thinking.

Every teacher submit their own yearly learning plan in January every year. Then all teachers vote to decide the activities to do next year and set the learning goals. As a result, every individual teacher has passion to contribute personal creativity to support children's learning.

Triangel means reduce, circle means increase. Aiko provides various bonus for teachers who give birth, for example flexible working hours, Disney tickets and so on. 97% of teachers chose to go back to their nurseries.

The five principles: health, social relationship, environment, language and behaviour. All the activities are designed based on these five principles.

Non-shoes education: the purpose of this is to practise children's balance. The difference is obvious. After a while, children who wear shoes normally, their toes are close to each other. On the other hand, those children who are not normally wear shoes, their toes are spread apart so they can keep balance.

All the nurseries don't have outside facilities like slides. Instead of that, children enjoy themselves in nature.

Giving birth and funeral: life is precious and respect others.

They have collaboration with Dennish nurseries to learn from each other.