At Wee Care we view children as unique individuals that deserve more than                     simply being responded to on a needs basis. This is not to deny our concern for children’s needs but rather to give attention and strength to the rights that are often ignored “ rights as protagonists in their own learning and right as citizens” (Rinaldi). We therefore have shifted the focus from “at risk” and “in need” to a positive focus of “rights”. We recognise children’s potential, observable in their flexibility, curiosity, sense of wonder, imagination and desire to grow, communicate and relate to people.    

We understand that all children enter our Early Childhood setting with a history, life experience and knowledge. The Care and Education of young children is viewed not in isolation but in relation with family, peers, education, the environment and local community. A continuous dialogue among children, educators and families facilitates a reflective curriculum. Children Being, Belonging and Becoming.

Wee Care provides a truly child centred program which

develops in children a desire to learn, question, analyse , hypothesise and

research, building an excellent basis for a lifetime of

learning. We are influenced by many Educational theorists

and models and are especially interested in an Italian

experience in Early Childhood, called Reggio Emilia as well

as Howard Gardeners Theories of Multiple Intelligences,

the Forest Schools of Scotland and Scandinavia ,

Emergent Curriculum and The Early Years Learning

Framework of Australia.        

The Hundred Languages of Children:

Children possess an innate capacity for expression and

communication in infinite ways.

“ The child

is made of one hundred.

The child has

a hundred languages

a hundred hands

a hundred thoughts

a hundred ways of thinking

of playing, of specking.

A hundred, always a hundred

ways of listening,

of marvelling, of loving,

a hundred joys

for singing and understanding,

a hundred worlds

to discover,

a hundred worlds

to invent,

a hundred worlds

to dream.

The child has a hundred languages

(and a hundred hundred hundred more)

but they steal ninety nine.

The school and the culture

separate the head from the body.

They tell the child:

to discover the world already there

and of the hundred

they steal ninety nine.

They tell the child:

that work and play

reality and fantasy,

science and imagination,

sky and earth,

reason and dream

are things

that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child

that the hundred is not there.

But the child says:

No way. The hundred is there!

Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio Emilia Philosophy, 1920-1994.