**Kindergarten - A Concept of Educational & Entrepreneurial Excellence by Prof. em. Dr. Jürgen Zimmer** 200 years after Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the kindergarten idea, the Life- Situational Approach has developed a concept which combines positive elements of the traditional kindergarten with modern pedagogical and developmental- psychological insights. The kindergarten will emphasize and promote the creativity, curiosity, and motivation of the children. It will allow the children to be children without babying them. It will promote and encourage them, not through mechanical drills, but by helping them in their own discoveries of their inner and outer worlds. The following characteristics of its pedagogical concept are the most important: - Learning in real-life situations: Children learn how to cope with situations here and now, not some hypothetical situation in the distant future, not adult situations. And coping does not only mean surviving in situations, but also being able to grasp them as alterable and oneself as effective. - The connection between social and factual learning: this works against alienated learning. Away from separating initial mathematical operations from social contexts, away from promoting a kind of speech that has nothing to do with own experience, away from learning that is devoid of sense. The primacy of social learning applies. Factual learning is important, but is to be integrated into the process of social learning and whenever possible with reference to social contexts. The children acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to understand and create real-life situations. Atomized, tailored learning which does not lead to comprehensible meaningful connections is avoided. - Children take part in creating situations in which they are involved, and in the life within and outside the kindergarten. They cooperate in selecting and planning activities; not everything is simply arranged for them by the kindergarten teacher. They are encouraged to influence situations and change them. Self initiative and responsibility are promoted, - The children experience the sense of norms in real-life situations. They do not receive lectures on norms, but are given the opportunity of making sense of them in context, and to negotiate their activity in them correspondingly. - The kindergarten teachers secure a promotion of basic qualifications appropriate to the stage of development, taking into account the individual characteristics of each child and their different levels of development. - The kindergarten teachers promote the diversity of the children's' expressive possibilities. They encourage activity involving all the senses, diverse forms of movement alternating with quiet and thoughtfulness, free play as well as creative and artistic activity, the expression of feelings and emotional intelligence. - Children have a right to increasingly understand the world, themselves, and their social environment. They gradually become acquainted with their own culture and learn to respect the cultures of others, step by step they become more familiar with the world of the spirit, tradition, and religion. - The children live and learn in mixed age groups as much as possible. Three- year-olds often accept more from five-year-olds than from adults, and older children can develop real empathy for the needs of younger children. Outside in real life, everything is learned among people of mixed ages. On the other hand the mixing of age groups is no dogma - there can also be situations in which peer groups want to be among themselves. - The kindergarten teacher assumes a partner-like, impulse-giving role with regard to the children. She is curious and encourages curiosity, full of initiative and promotes the same in the children, and learns along with them. She plans the pedagogical events openly, with input from the children. There are no fixed planning models - a specific design of activities no longer acts as corset to the normal kindergarten day. - Learning for life situations also means learning in life situations. Hence fields of activity outside of the kindergarten will be integrated, so that the kindergarten truly becomes a part of the social network. - The kindergarten teacher remains in close dialog with parents and families. The parents are not just onlookers, but rather personal authorities on the situations of their children. They take part in the kindergarten whenever they want to. In order to do this, it is important that the kindergarten be flexible with parents with regard to time and organization. - Children of different ethnic background grow up together. Integration does not mean giving up your own origins and culture. On the contrary, it means respect for each other as the key for international understanding and mutual cultural enrichment. The Life-Situational Approach, internationally in demand because of its sensitivity to each culture, requires high pedagogical qualifications and a corresponding education and additional training of kindergarten teachers capable of working with the concept. The Institut für den Situationsansatz der Internationalen Akademie Berlin ("Institute for the Life-Situational Approach of the International Academy" in Berlin), which authentically advocates this approach, has offered to take over the supervision of such kindergartens, assure quality standards, and provide a certified training of the situation approach for interested institutions and persons in Asia. ## [Concept](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/196/concept) Chapters - **[1. Little History School for Life Chiang Mai](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/210/1-little-history-school-for-life-chiang-mai)** - **[2. At First Sight](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/209/2-at-first-sight)** - **[3. Characteristics](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/208/3-characteristics)** - **[4. The Family Concept](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/207/4-the-family-concept)** - **[5. Kindergarten](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/206/5-kindergarten)** - **[6. Schooling and Deschooling](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/205/6-schooling-and-deschooling)** - **[7. Learning Through Life](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/204/7-learning-through-life)** - **[8. The Seven Centers of Excellence](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/203/8-the-seven-centers-of-excellence)** - **[9. Think Tank and Master Workshops](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/202/9-think-tank-and-master-workshops)** - **[10. The Setting](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/201/10-the-setting)** - **[11. Teachers](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/200/11-teachers)** - **[12. Guests](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/199/12-guests)** - **[13. Partners](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/198/13-partners)** - **[14. Transfer of innovation](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/197/14-transfer-of-innovation)** - **[15 ](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/196/concept#15.-attachments)[Source PDF (external site)](https://school-for-life.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SfL-Konzept-2003-2016_fin-1.pdf)** School for Life, 185/3 Moo 4, T. Pameing, Doi Saket District, 50220 Chiang Mai, Thailand Tel. +66 53 248194