We are an early childhood learning community built from the ground up for like-minded teachers, families, and their children. Together we are re-imagining education to focus on self-regulation, creative-thinking, and language learning through art, collaborative projects, and inquiry-based learning.
Our close-knit learning community was started with the idea that there should be something different from what most early childhood programs are today. Through decades of research and study from the great minds of Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, John Dewey and others, early childhood educators know and understand what is needed for our youngest learners. However, pressures from the misguided beliefs of society and well-meaning families have led the vast majority of early childhood programs to use materials and curricula that are, at best, not appropriate for young children, and at worst, damaging for them.
We want something different for our children. We believe there ought to be a balance between rigorous learning and playful learning. In fact, the boundaries between what is academic and what is play is completely blurred in a high-quality early childhood setting. What matters most is that the children are engaged in meaningful learning experiences that excite them to the point that they want to drive their own learning. We are building a center where children are allowed to make mistakes to learn from them, learn to be a positive contributor to a community of others, and explore the world surrounding them.
Our educational program is inspired by the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia 瑞吉歐 , Italy and grounded in the theories of Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey, and Maria Montessori. We follow a constructivist philosophy in which we know children construct their own knowledge through hands-on experiences and reflection on those experiences. As educators, our role is to carefully prepare an environment and to be co-constructors of their learning as guides and collaborators. Through purposeful interaction and reflection, teachers will be able to engage our children in meaningful, experiential learning experiences that go much deeper than traditional approaches, where children are often memorizing or mindlessly daydreaming through lessons that have very little meaning for them.
We take a dynamically balanced approach to playful learning and so-called academic learning. We engage in projects we call, Studies, which is the backdrop to much of their learning. As we progress through a Study, observant teachers will incorporate increasingly complex vocabulary, writing, and reading skill-building experiences that connect with their Study and interests. It is this partnership between our children and our teachers that make our educational program possible. It's a lot more effort on the part of every member of our learning community: teachers, children, and their families, but the result is more than worth it.
Little Seeds Academy was founded by an American expat couple from New York. Parenthood led them to the fascinating world of what’s possible when we listen to children and help them construct their own knowledge. Inspired by the boundless creativity and curiosity of their own children, they set out to research and learn more about early childhood curriculum and instruction by visiting some of the most progressive schools in their native New York City. What they saw and learned planted the seeds of what would later become a unique and steadfastly progressive early childhood program in Taipei.
Family ties to Taiwan brought the couple and their young children to Taipei in 2015. Those same family ties have been running schools throughout Taipei for over 40 years. Leveraging the operational expertise gleaned from decades of running educational programs and energized by what they saw from progressive schools in America, our founding couple set out to make their mark in early childhood education. Little Seeds first opened its doors in August 2016 in Taipei.
Today, Little Seeds Academy is a vibrant learning community attracting passionate educators, like-minded families and their children. All stakeholders of this learning community have come together to contribute to a progressive vision of English-immersion early childhood education. We continue to operate with a growth mindset, constantly experimenting and responding to the children’s interests and the latest research from the ECE field, to ensure our children have the best education. In the face of a short-sighted, backward-looking educational landscape, our learning community continues to defend the early years with developmentally-appropriate and meaningful education for young children.
