Creating a Home for Body, Soul and Spirit

Creating a Home for Body, Soul, and Spirit - A New Approach to Childcare

This is a thorough, detailed, and comprehensive guide to
a new way of working with out-of-home care of young children from an
anthroposophical perspective. Part One gives a picture of how the day
nursery can support the development of the child through an understanding of
the fourfold human sheaths, emulating the archetypal home. Part Two goes
into further detail about practical matters, including food, sleep,
festivals, and more. Many examples from the author's groundbreaking work at
Awhina Day Nursery and Kindergarten in New Zealand, as well as charming
photographs of the Awhina children, are included.

Childcare has become more readily available in the past few decades, growing
from something relatively small to a burgeoning "industry." It has become a
product-oriented industry, which sees infants and young children cared for
in group situations, usually defined by age and with as many as thirty
children, sometimes more, in any one group. In New Zealand, childcare is
strongly supported by a government that is encouraging one could almost say
pressuring mothers back into the workforce, ostensibly for the good of the
women and the country . . . but what about the children?

This is a book about childcare from a different perspective. It is about the
life of the family, of which the child is an intrinsic part. The child
cannot be separated off from the family when we discuss childcare. This book
is about supporting the family of today by offering a form of childcare that
both respects and emulates the home a form of childcare that embraces
nurturing practices of the home and family, and at the same time provides a
role model for the parent.

--From the Introduction by Bernadette Raichle

WECAN PUBLICATIONS
ISBN: 978-1-936849-01-7
193 pages