Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/quality-care-through-multi-age-grouping-of-children/5014870/
Multi-age grouping (MAG) of young children in early childhood services can and does provide a rich and exciting learning environment - and it can be made to work for children, parents, and staff with the right kind of approach and attitude. If I had a dollar for all the times people have said to me, "We tried mixed age grouping, and it did not work," I would be a much richer bloke today.Well, at UTS Child Care MAG does work and has been doing so for some time. In our programs multi-ages include children from birth to ten year olds, and they mix in almost every conceivable combination. The children love it, new children settle well to the group, and challenging behaviours are minimised. Parents are happy with the service and after a time become great proponents of mixed age grouping. Staff are happy with the challenge of the workplace and the positive environment they work in. The positive feedback we get when our five year olds go off to school suggests the approach delivers a quality educational program and effectively helps children make the transition to school.
As our programs are located on campus, our families have particular needs which may ...