Our Planet

The year 2018 is coming towards the end, already 3 months have passed since the opening of 2 nurseries, and it is now 1 year and 4 months since the birth of Yamanoko. I wonder what kind of year it has been for you

Looking back on year 2018 as Yamanoko, below are the keywords I came up with:
・The opening of Yamanoko Childcare Center (the start of two nurseries as one)
・Shifting to a “Exploration Method”

The opening of the second Yamanoko Childcare Center -this had been just like the long-awaited birth after the quickening period, a turning point to finally reach the starting line.

The second keyword needs some explanation, as the words “Exploration Method” themselves do not explain. However, this has been a big revelation and a turning point for Yamanoko.
In the field of (child) education, there is no right answer on any method; each educator’s experiences and perspectives become as the basis of their actions, which can easily cause conflict between each other’s different beliefs -this is complicated because both of the parties can be right. Hence, we previously thought certain principles deriving from these beliefs are necessary to keep the form of education on a certain track, otherwise our form of education will be all over the place.

From this belief, we have had done discussions a couple of times to think about “what is our mission now?”, however this did not reach a reasonable consequence. As we discuss, search and struggle, we eventually ended up questioning, “what’s your idea now?” -and then we came to realise searching for missions and principles were not our style.

 

We came to realise that our thoughts and minds will be more liberated as we treasure every moment with children while questioning this. It is nothing but this very moment that is going to give birth to the next process -the moment now which the current me and you live in.

The focus is “here now”, and not certain beliefs from the past experiences.

We adults usually tend to go ahead and aim for the next with actions based on past experiences. However, we as Yamanoko want to aim to perceive the state of this world through new eyes, which is the pure natural form of children. By cherishing every session with each child, we can continue our exploration.

To aim to make this happen at Yamanoko, our daily form of recording also needed to be in a certain form too. Therefore, we decided to completely alter the recording system from October, and put up a “share your idea/ exploration experiences” board at the entrance. We believe that establishing exploration method as the fundamental of Yamanoko was one event to be remembered as Yamanoko history.

 

Our cherished aspect of questioning “what’s your idea now?”. Deep down this simple question lies another bigger question, “why do we do education in THIS time of period?” This phrase have had gone through our minds over and over even before Yamanoko had any shape or form yet. How we perceive society, and future for our children to live, how we define “education”, and how “self” is involved in all this. Yamanoko is when all of these different elements intertwine and entangle to create one big picture in a tapestry. We are yet to know what kind of picture it is going to be, but certainly it is weaved and developed day by day. And each of this weaving sound might probably be us constantly questioning “what’s your idea now?”