Give your child the freedom to grow

As soon as you walk into Wilmar Children’s Centre, you know you’ve entered a place where children are given the freedom to grow and develop as individuals. Greeted by laughter, smiles and colourful pieces of artwork, it’s the kind of environment where the imagination can run wild, and young minds can expand at a rapid rate.

The first person you meet is owner Neville, welcoming you in with a warm smile before he ushers you into a chair opposite him to sit down and have a chat. Then in wanders his wife Pat, cradling a tiny ginger kitten snuggled into a blanket. She puts it down and it walks on wobbly feet towards its mother in an adjoining room. Pat then starts to talk about the menagerie of animals at the Centre – cats, guinea pigs, birds, fish, chickens and ducks all call Wilmar home. There was once even a cow named Queenie who resided here too, but the council was none too pleased about having her join the community. Pat says kids benefit greatly from having animals around, and from taking care of them, particularly if they’ve never had a pet at home.

"It teaches them empathy and caring and all those sorts of things. Thinking of others, how to look after them, respecting their wishes, and teaching them to socialise," she explains.

The environment at Wilmar mimics home life as much as possible, with children involved in preparing meals and cleaning up so that they learn to act responsibly. Children in the nursery to kindergarten are encouraged to develop appropriate independence skills, by involvement in routine tasks. Through songs, stories, folk tales, poems and discussions, they learn to enjoy language. They also learn co-operation, the joys of friendship and acceptable and appropriate social skills by engaging in free play, co-operative games and domestic activities. To be fully engaged in such activities is a child’s best preparation for life because it develops concentration, curiosity, initiative, good self-esteem and a lifelong love of learning. To augment the program, the services of specialist teachers have been enlisted for music, movement and pottery as well as giving special time and emphasis on relaxation, meditation and children’s yoga. The children are also exposed to computers to help them grasp the world they are about to enter.

But the children are given a lot of scope when it comes to being given a task.

"There’s a big difference in telling a child to do something and letting them think of it for themselves," says Neville.

So if the children are going to draw something, instead of being told to simply draw a tree, they are set up outside in front of a tree, and told to draw what they see, allowing them to interpret what they see in any way they choose.

It is an accepted fact that infants and young children learn through their senses; they are entirely given over to their physical surroundings and respond by imitating what they see around them. This fact determines that it is of the utmost importance that those concerned with the nurturing of young children - e.g. parents, caregivers, nursery and kindergarten teachers - have a responsibility to create an environment and role models that are worthy of the child’s imitation. The environment should offer the child plenty of opportunities for meaningful imitation and creative play; this can only be achieved in a stress-free environment, with appropriate limits, which provides the child with the confidence to achieve success. Also, by providing open-ended learning experiences and placing emphasis on the process used in developing a skill, rather than the end result, encourages children to attempt new challenges, thus ensuring they continue to develop.

And as the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding – Neville and Pat have just had their first second generation child start at the Centre. "That’s a milestone," laughs Pat. And no doubt there will be plenty more for Wilmar Children’s Centre.