Day Care Concept

Children want to learn, play and move. Children want to learn, play and move.
Kids Camp children can learn through play, learn to move and move while playing.

Each child mixes the three fields according to his or her needs. We call supporting each child in this process individual competence.

Day Care

Kids Camp understands the needs of working parents, which is why the opening hours for all our day care centres are based on usual working hours. All Kids Camp centres are open more than 9 hours daily. They are open the whole year and only close for Christmas and the New Year.

Care from 1 Year

Children need special encouragement, support, and care from the very beginning. For this reason, Kids Camp offers children loving and nurturing care starting from the age of one. The children are cared for in stable groups where their playmates and educators remain constant.

Children under 3 are in small groups of 10 or less according to their age. Starting in kindergarten, the group size increases to 20 children per group. Within the groups, smaller groups are created for more individual support.

Bilingualism

The formative years of a child’s life are the most valuable for learning a language. All activities in each age group are designed to promote English and German language skills in a playful way. In each group, there is one German-speaking and one English-speaking professional educator. The educators speak to the children and carry out learning activities in their native language. Through this immersion method, children are able to acquire new language skills quickly.

Linguistically Qualified Staff

Each group has two professionally qualified educators. Additionally, we have further support staff to assist the group leaders with their pedagogical work and staff members available to stand in for holidays and absences. The pedagogical staff is largely freed from administrative and organisational tasks so that they can focus on their pedagogical work with the children.

Promoting Child Development

The pedagogical credo of Kids Camp regards “learning” as a natural part of being a child. This is not just limited to learning a language but includes additional core competencies that are developed and fostered in a bilingual environment:

• fine and gross motor skills
• social competences
• flexibility and creativity in thinking and behaving
• personality development
• independence
• concentration
• and much more

As the children grow, the focus shifts depending on the age of the children. For the 3 to 6-year-old children the joy of learning is an additional important element.

Learning Naturally

Children begin learning before they are even born. Their most intensive learning happens in the first years where they learn to crawl, sit, walk, and speak. The separation often found in Germany – in kindergarten the children play and in school they learn – does not correlate with the natural learning behaviour and demands of children. Therefore, Kids Camp does not want to simply “start learning early” but continually supports children’s motivation to be life-long learners. Being a child is inherent with learning.

„If educators and parents knew exactly what they were doing, they could get children excited about many topics that they didn’t even think they were capable of. Our kindergartens would have to look very different.“

Prof. Dr. Friedrich Wilkening, developmental psychologist at the University of Zurich

Pedagogical Concept

Kids Camp’s pedagogical concept is differentiated according to the children’s age. Children aged 1 to 3 develop their general abilities along with their personalities in very individual ways. What all children have in common, however, is that they have acquired certain skills and abilities by approximately the end of their third year so that more structured learning can begin. Teaching basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic are part of the learning goals for children 4-6 years old, as well as experimenting in the “House of Little Scientists”, which teaches and helps them understand scientific and technical phenomena. Kids Camp bases its programme on practice and experience from other European countries where these learning goals for pre-school children are taken for granted.

Activities

Our Kids Camp programme is supplemented by optional activities that aim to promote age-appropriate skills while at the same time taking the children’s interests and talents into account. A broad, changing range of activities for the physical as well as the intellectual development of the children includes art projects, sports activities, early musical education, nature experiments, literature circles, excursions, and much more.

Company Oriented

Kids Camp aims to provide a solution for the problems companies often encounter due to the lack of childcare and has been cooperating with numerous companies for 15 years providing these with places for their employee’s children.

Whether it is the insufficient quality or quantity, the lack of childcare services results in employees being absent for several years. In addition to the cost of hiring a replacement, the obligation to guarantee that an employee may return is also a risk for companies.

On the other hand, studies show that company-supported childcare leads to increased employee loyalty and job satisfaction. A prerequisite for coordinating children and work is that all parties, including employers, are involved in the care concept.

Private Sector

Kids Camp has chosen the non-profit limited company as its legal form. This makes it easier for companies to make direct grants and opens up access to public funds.

The private-sector ownership of Kids Camp is an expression of a fundamental political conviction that places the subsidiarity principle in the foreground for childcare as well.

Even though the family and children enjoy special protection in our society, individual initiative and entrepreneurship take precedence over the constant call for the state. State supervision and the setting of frameworks are a matter of course.

Close to the Working place

Even today, kindergartens and day care facilities are primarily planned and set up in connection with residential areas. In the Rhine-Main area, long commuting times to work are not uncommon – at least one hour must be added to the pure working time, which must be covered by childcare.

Childcare close to the working place, on the other hand, means that parents and children have the same commute and can spend more time together. For this reason, Kids Camp also offers places for children who do not live in the immediate vicinity of the Kids Camp in question.

Location and Surroundings

The locations of the Kids Camp day care centres are all situated in attractive, albeit very different, surroundings. What they all have in common is that interesting destinations such as parks, zoos, museums, but also swimming pools and sports facilities are easily accessible and offer many opportunities for excursions. After all, getting to know the sights and discovering the surroundings is part of being a child. Of course, all Kids Camps have an enclosed outdoor area where the children can play and romp safely.