We hold a strong view of children being competent, curious, full of knowledge, potential, and interested in connecting to the world around them.
This is where children feel safe, cultivate strong, secure and trusting relationships, develop life skills and know that their thoughts and ideas are important and valuable.
"The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things."
Jean Piaget
FOSTERING EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS
Children play and learn in a calm yet inspiring mixed-age play space that allows them to be free to express their thoughts & exercise their imagination and encourages them to learn to listen to different ideas in a respectful and mindful way.
Children learn to work together to achieve common goals as a team. They become self-motivated to seek solutions and collaborate with others.
OUR TEAM
Our practice is research-based. We are life-long learners and view ourselves as partners with children & families in nurturing children's holistic development. The team regularly engages in continuing professional development. We meet with fellow play leaders as well as local early childhood practitioners and international early childhood colleagues through learning exchanges, dialogues and professional training opportunities. With informed knowledge on early childhood education and self & group reflections to guide us, we regularly review and improve our practice.
“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.”
O. Fred Donaldson
We advocate for child-led play. We celebrate play and embrace curiosity. Play comes naturally to children and it is how they learn best. We believe that children learn when they are having fun. Visitors to The Tinker Yard will find children engaging in different activities. At times, play might get messy which is perfectly fine with us as that is the exact reflection of real play!
THE CHILD IS THE CURRICULUM
Curriculum at The Tinker Yard is built upon principles of RIE and the Reggio Emilia approach. We hold a strong view that children are capable and competent learners. Curriculum is framed around big ideas that children have. Our teachers carefully observe children at play and use those observations to plan the curriculum. Learning is meaningful and interesting to children.
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
Fred Rogers
ENVIRONMENT
The environment at The Tinker yard is richly resourced with a diverse range of loose parts. Our space is intentionally designed and ready to offer children beautiful, open-ended materials and experiences full of possibility. Children have access to a diverse range of open-ended materials to explore, manipulate and invent with. Our team works hard to regularly update our learning space at The Tinker Yard to accommodate new ideas that children have.
AUTONOMY
Children are given opportunity to make decisions, try things out, test their hypothesis and more importantly feel secure to take risks. We learn by doing and mistakes are inevitable. At The Tinker Yard, mistakes are accepted. We believe that children learn from failures as much as from successes.
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
Albert Einstein
REVIEWS
We are grateful that parents who have joined us in our classes share the same philosophy on early years learning.
