So where i work, in the childcare, we take the babys from 3month
old to 4years old. Here in Switzerland mothers get just 3month free time
after the baby came. That's the time you got to stay home and get paid.
If you want to stay home longer, you can if you talk with your boss for
a working break or something. The good part in my childcare, we have a
special programm, and there every child can play what he wants. Our
house has 10 different rooms with different things (baby room, coloring
room, reading room, jumping room...and more..) All the kids can go to
the different rooms like they want to (in every room is someone to take
care of them)
The kids learn to help themselves and figure out stuff without
hundred of ideas from me They learn to think about what they're doing
and how they're gonna do that.
At the same we have the
programm to watch 2 kids (in 14days), how they play, what they play, how
they act in the group and a lot more. The whole team does that about
those 2 kids and after that time, we're having a meeting about that. We
talk about the things that the kid likes to do, and does really good.
(we take the positive things - everything is positive in a way)
That's how i can say we take a look at every kid and talk about
their needs and help them where they need it. The whole team knows a lot
about kids and do special activitis to work with the kids.
i love that programm, the parents love it and the kids love it.
We really take each child and work with them...
The
childcare is pretty expensive, but i've you don't get like 60'000francs
money as a family from your work the city is helping you to pay it.
They look at your work, how much you get and then they do some crazy
math to figure out how much you get for the childcare.
Every village/city in switzerland needs a place, where parents can bring their kids.
I
know too, that if your child has a handicap the city is gonna help you
to pay all those therapys and special schools. There are schools (my
cousin is at one like that) where just AD(H)S and autism kids can go to.
They have room for therapy rooms and everything, so you dont have to go
from one place to the other with your kid. Thats pretty cool. I know
from my cousin that the teachers there so good, they really take care of
each kid and ask them about their thougths and needs.
At my childcare we have one person who comes like
once or twice a month to help us with kids with special needs or if i
have a kid in the childcare and i think he/she needs to start talk and
he/she wont, i can call her and she comes to help me figure out the next
steps that we've gonna do.
From my correspondence with her, I have learned that the government really helps families get children into early childhood programs. It seems like there is much more support from the government in other countries than there is here in the US. I assume a lot of that has to do with the higher tax rates in other countries. Still, it seems like we put so many other things ahead of education on our priority lists in this country and we wonder why things are so messed up!
Jamie,
ReplyDeletewow, this sounds amazing. However, for children to be able to wander from one room to another tells me their licensing regulations aren't as stringent as ours....if a child moves from one room to another in Texas, a teacher must be with them at all times. I like that they have special schools for children with autism etc, except for the fact that the other children do not learn from the special needs children and the special needs children do not learn from the normally developing children. But, overall it sounds like Switzerland understands the importance of early education.