社会福祉法人 至誠学舎立川 保育統轄事業本務 立川・世田谷ブロック 至誠保育園

“Nido” is an Italian word, which means “nest”.
It represents a very important period in the life of the chick, when it needs a lot of protective care and support under its mother’s wing.
We have set various corners in order to preserve the daily individual rhythm of eating, sleeping, and physical activities. Here infants spend the important period until they are weaned and start walking.
Infants are divided into two groups by age

This is a group for children from around a year and a half to 3-years old,
who can already walk and move around freely. For this group we adopt the multiage nursery care based on the Montessori Method.
Children at this age are eager for imitative activity and the group aims to establish basic independent skills such as dressing and undressing,
eating, and excreting on their own. The group is divided in two rooms? the Bunny room and the Squirrel room (each room for children from a year and a half to 3-years old).

As children grow up, communication with other children from different age groups becomes an increasingly important matter.
Because we place priority on the opportunity for the children to learn about each other, we adopt the multiage nursery care for this group, which is based on the Montessori Method.
Under this method children of different age groups are raised in the same environment, where younger children adoringly imitate and follow older children.
as kindness, caring, and leadership.
This cultivates sociability and cooperative spirit in children, which is a very important achievement, especially nowadays, when few children have brothers and sisters.

Furthermore, as children enter a period when their intellectual desire grows, we have created an environment with various teaching materials that children can use freely.
This group is divided in two rooms ? the Apricot-tree room and the Zelkova-tree room (each room for children from 3-years old to preschool age).

Our educational system respects the individual pace of each child starting from the infants and places a high priority on their individuality.

We always ask children “What do you want to do?” (giving priority to their will) and tell them “Let’s help you so that you can do it on your own.” (developing inner speech capacity and self esteem in children).

Thus we attach great importance on the development of their individuality.

In the nursery we consider this period of their growth as the most important in terms of personality formation and apply the method for a given time every day after they arrive at the Nursery.

Four-to-five years is the age in particular when children start developing group consciousness.

We provide them with opportunities to experience activities where children think for themselves what to do and how to act accordingly, to learn how to control themselves in a group, or to compete with one another and to help each other to achieve one goal.

Every day children enjoy playing and walking in the nursery garden.

They taste various fruits grown in the rich natural environment, learn the delight of participating in the process of growing fruits harvesting them, and then tasting them, and develop sense of gratitude toward nature.

These activities contribute also to rearing strong and healthy children.

Children spend more time in the nursery than at home.

It is important that they learn some life skills It is also important to that they become aware that they are responsible for their own life.

Furthermore, children should learn that through doing things by themselves they can be of help to other people.

We think that all fundamental living skills should be acquired through everyday-life activities.