Details
First Starts is a specialized pre-school programme for children with learning needs.
BENEFITS
Mapped onto Wee Care’s highly successful Bright Starts and Head Starts programmes for regular children, First Starts is a primer programme; a first start, so to speak, of little steps before the child’s eventual and hoped-for “big step” into a mainstream setting.
Like all of Wee Care’s other learning programmes, First Starts is characterized by:
- playful and experiential Open Learning activities that allow for the child’s holistic development, with a special emphasis on the development of social language, social and creative play as well as social interaction skills;
- Life Skills activities that encourage independence and social awareness, self-help abilities, fine-motor dexterity and the development of Emotional Intelligence (a Theory of Mind).
Importantly, teacher-therapists in the First Starts programme incorporate evidence-based behavioural approaches in the remediation of learning difficulties whilst encouraging the development of crucial prerequisite skills such as joint attention, imitation,
the motivation to learn plus the acquisition of a broader repertoire of play and behavioural skills.
ACTIVITIES and FORMAT
First Starts has a modified academic curriculum to accommodate learning differences. Subject components include the following each week:
Mondays: Language Concepts and Numicon Math
Tuesdays: Open Learning and Phonics/Letters
Wednesdays: Life Skills and Language & Communication
Thursdays: Open Learning and Language & Communication
Fridays: Language Concepts and Science
PARENT / CAREGIVER INVOLVEMENT
First Starts is a drop-off programme and parents/caregivers are not required to participate in the learning sessions. However, First Starts teachers-therapists are continually on hand to brief and keep parents up-to-date with their children’s progress.
CLASS SIZE and EDUCATOR-CHILD RATIO
First Starts has a low teacher-student ratio; in this case, of 1 teacher to 3 children. First Starts can only enrol 5 children per morning session.
Wee Care was birthed from a heart that wants the best for infants, toddlers, children with special needs and their parents. Founded in 1996 by teacher and mother of three, Mrs Denise Lai, Wee Care began as a provider of home-based midwifery services to babies and new mothers. Eventually, the services took on an educational nature to ensure that infants and toddlers developed well whilst their parents were at work.
Three years later, Parent-Child PlayGroups were introduced to give working parents the opportunity to develop deeper bonds with their babies and toddlers through motivated, directed and purposeful play. At the same time, Behavioural Management Programmes were added to the fold to provide early assistance to children with special learning needs.
Today, Wee Care stands out among the crowd of educational centres as the home-grown pioneer in research-based Infant Development, Early Childhood Education and Early Intervention Programmes.
It is one of the top centres in Singapore for the rehabilitation of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and other developmental problems. Child psychologists at the KK Women and Children’s Hospital (KKH) and the National University Hospital (NUH) of Singapore, as well as those at private hospitals and clinics, make regular recommendations to their clients to seek therapy services here. ...
