Saxon Education Plan

3. What is contained in the Saxon Education Plan?

Guideline

The »Saxon Education Plan - A Guideline for Teaching Staff in Child Day Care Centres« has been in effect in Dresden since 2006. With this plan, the Saxon State Ministry for Social Affairs defines thematic and methodological principles for the work of the day care teachers.

Basis

Child day care centres are places at which all children receive an equal opportunity to participate in daily life, to learn and to experience recognition. The children are perceived and promoted as both »social actors« and »actors in their own right«. Parents and teachers are jointly responsible for the development of the children and complement each other in their efforts.

Research has demonstrated that learning processes begin at a very early stage, from the very moment of birth. Children must thus be offered a learning environment which is as diverse as possible, to which families can contribute in just the same way as the qualified teaching staff in the day care centres. The education offers of the child day care centres promote such complex skills as perception, emotion, thought, social behaviour, language, imagination and creativity.

Education complexes

To permit optimum realisation of the children's development potential and the integration of adequate freedoms and constructive ideas into daily teaching practice, the Saxon Education Plan defines six education complexes:

Physical and somatic education

The health and well-being of the children is here placed in the foreground. After all, if body and soul are healthy, children will learn with pleasure and success. Physical activity, in particular, supports personal development. The targeted promotion of exercise trains cognitive, emotional and social skills. Health promotion is thus an intensive element of the daily learning process.

Social education

Children generally experience two social learning environments - the family and the day care centre. The most important persons to whom they relate are their parents, brothers and sisters and other family members. In the child day care centres, they are able to establish further social relationships - among the children themselves and between children and teachers. In these surroundings, a functioning social interaction is developed between all those involved. In their play, in particular, the children learn important rules of social behaviour.

Communicative education

Infants communicate their mood and feelings through gestures, facial expressions and sounds, and can in this way make themselves understood. Their progressive learning of language later opens up ever wider horizons for the children. Through dialogue with other children and adults, they learn to apply a variety of communication means and techniques. The promotion of language skills is integrated into all aspects of daily activity in the day care centre, through role play, descriptions of discoveries, the relating of experiences, and so on.

Aesthetic education

Feeling, sight, hearing, smell and taste - children use all their senses to explore their environment. Their sensory perceptions, in turn, influence their thinking and actions. The child day care centres thus provide comprehensive ranges of different materials. Through music, dance, theatre and art, the children are offered further stimuli for creative activity and self-expression.

Scientific education

Children are natural explorers. They observe their environment exactly, and the questions they ask encourage further reflection. The teachers promote this inquisitiveness by taking up the search for answers together with the children. They provide ideas for new quests and support the children in their collecting, observations, comparisons, experiments and conclusions.

Mathematical education

The identification of regularities, development of perceptions of time and quantity, and comparisons of geometric figures - all this, and much more, provides a foundation for a child's natural mathematical understanding. The teachers promote these skills in their corresponding daily activities.

Optional: Religious education

Basic religious experiences and values influence all spheres of daily life. For this reason, this aspect is also included in the Saxon Education Plan. Actual activities are left to the discretion of the individual day care centre. Whether consideration of the meaning of life, religious traces in our general culture, respect for religious life forms, or determination of social and moral values in co-existence - there are many topics which can be tackled appropriately together with the children.

Further information

Sächsischer Bildungsplan - ein Leitfaden für pädagogische Fachkräfte in Kindertageseinrichtungen, 2006, verlag das netz, Weimar, Berlin (in German)