Assalaamu’alaikum wr. wb.
Wow, it’s been a long time since my last post. I’ve been hiatus for 4 months. Yeah, we all know what the reason was. 😀 But lately I feel like blogging again. I suddenly have the urge to tell everyone about something. Nope, it’s not about Naisha’s birthday, which I planned to make a post about it too (later :p). It’s one of the things I love the most here in Wellington, NZ. It’s Naisha’s Karori Playcentre. 🙂
What is Playcentre? Playcentres are parent-led early childhood centres which offer high quality education for children in small mixed-age groups. Playcentres also offer free parenting and early childhood education for parent members. That, what is written in playcentre website. Well, you can gain all information about Playcentre by clicking the link provided. But let me tell you about Playcentre, in my point of view.
One day I joined this Course 1 discussion. It’s one of the tasks that should be done, to finish course 1 (I’ll tell you about it later). And there was this activity led by the tutor, that let us pick one of the photos available there, which describe our current state at Playcentre. I pick the photo of books. Why books? Cause for me, joining Playcentre is like reading books. You gain a lot of information, you learn a lot, but the difference is that we don’t learn by reading, but we learn by actually become part of the centre, do the activities. The interesting thing is that not only the kids who learn, but the adults too. And joining Playcentre not only makes me “READ” books, but it makes me want to WRITE a book. Yes, I love Playcentre so much that I want to make “Playcentres” in Indonesia. Therefore I need to write, to keep all my knowledge about Playcentre, and hopefully one day I’ll be able to have Playcentres built in Indonesia. Aamiin. 🙂
So, what’s the difference between Playcentre, and any other pre-school or kindergarten?
1. Playcentre are parent led early childhood centres
At Playcentre, there is no formal educated teacher. Not a single one. Every activities done in the centre is led by parent members. From setting up the centre, do the play with the children, cleaning up the mess happened during the sessions, recording children development, etc. This might be the most different thing provided by Playcentre, compare to other kindergarten. And I must say, not every parent will suit this kind of teaching, as the parent have to give extra effort compare to the parent with children who goes to kindergarten with teachers.
One of the advantages of this parent led activities is, that Playcentre builds kid social skills in interacting with adults. In most of kindergarten, there are maybe 5-6 teachers. And some kindy have rules that each teacher is responsible to certain child. Here at Playcentre, we have 1:5 parent:kids ratio which means if there are 20 kids, at least 4 adults will be available. But sometimes 6-8 parents will be there during the sessions. And there is no specific parent assigned for specific kids, so kids can interact with every adult available. You will find the other advantages of this parent led activities through the rest of this post.
2. Mixed-age groups
Playcentre allows kids from 0 months to 5 years old to join here, while most of the kindergartens give minimum age to their students (this is one of the reasons we chose Playcentre, because Naisha was 17 months old when we search for her kindergarten, and most of kindy wants a minimum of 2 yo students age). And there is no separated session for specific age in Playcentre. But there is additional session only for older kids.
Surprisingly, this mixed age groups turns out to be a great idea. It builds social skills to kids in different age. And I really think it helps older kids, learning to behave like a good big brother, when one day the time comes. And the younger kids feel recognized by the older, learn how to share and care. And it teaches the kid to make a healthy relationship not only with the same age kids, but with older/younger kids too.
3. Structured, but gives freedom to the kids to choose their activities
The activities done in the Playcentre are planned at least a week before the session. It is structured, for example there should be at least one cooking/science activities within a session, besides the other routine and spontaneous activities we usually have. But, in the end, we always give the freedom to the children to choose the activities they want to do. The resource will always be there for the kids to do play dough, crafting, painting, physical activities, role play, etc. And it will always be two-way activities, not one direction activities.
4. Offers free parenting and early childhood education for parent members.
The idea of Playcentre, is an early childhood learning facility provided by government, but run by citizens (parent members of Playcentre). The big picture I captured here is, NZ government not only wants to educate their young children, but also educate the parents, to further strengthen NZ families. Some of Playcentre facilities provided by governments beside all kindergarten needs are everything related to parent education.
For Playcentre parent members, there are courses that have to be taken. The courses teach us about childhood education and parenting education. In a simplest way: the do and don’ts for parents in educating/interacting with kids. But believe me, it’s a lot more comprehensive than that. As for me, now I just finished Course 1 (it’s not yet official), heading on Course 2. I finished Course 1 in 2 terms (each term consists of 10week). There are several tasks and a group discussion that need to be done to get through Course 1. Some of the things I learned in Course 2 are: about how to get settled in Playcentre, what to do within Playcentre sessions, Playcentre philosophy, NZ early childhood curriculum ,how to interact with children such as how/what to recognize, appreciate, how to ask in order to develop childrens creativity, etc. In a word: Interesting! 🙂
5. By us, from us and for us
Since the government only provides the facilities, all activities and management are handled by parent members. For example, the management roles such as Vice President, treasury, information officers, education officers, etc are hold by parent members (office holders). There are also specific teams for each session. The team leader and member will each have duty roles done within the session, such as do the cooking/science activity, writing learning story, preparing morning tea, do the washing, etc. This condition automatically builds adults relationship and teamwork. It also strengthen parent members self belonging and responsibilities to Playcentre. Yes, Playcentre doesn’t only educate the children, it educates the parents, too.
6. Playcentre Community
Playcentre located in most of New Zealand suburbs. Every Playcentre consists of at least (imo) 15 kids from 15 different families. Therefore it unites at least 15 families in each suburb. It makes a community, Playcentre Community. The big picture is, Playcentre helps NZ government strengthen NZ families, moreover its suburb communities, and the goal is to strengthen the countries.
What do we do to tighten our community? We do family gathering like family holiday camp, Fish n Chips night, Christmast Party, etc. And we help each other families too. For example, there is maternity leave for parent member who just delivered babies. And other parent member will happily help by providing meal for the parent on leave (we call it meal roster).
Whew, it’s a long post rite? I hope you dont get bored, do you? 😀 I think I’ll just stop it here now, though I still have a lot more to tell about Playcentre. I’m sure this is not my last post about Playcentre. Hopefully you understand it and might consider joining a Playcentre too. Till the next post! 🙂
Wassalaamu’alaikum wr. wb.
ps: I’m so sorry for the bad grammar, but I do really hope you all get my message here. Thank you for reading 🙂
Keluarga Ghifary 