Educating in Emotions

since 1974

Our educational project

We pursue children´s happiness from an emotional and multilingual approach

In Alaria Nursery Schools we implement an own and unique educational and pedagogical project, developed by teachers and education experts. Its major aim is to ensure that your children grow up in an environment where they can develop as people and, above all, be happy. Making children happy, we ensure that they grow up in the best possible learning environment and can receive an excellent value of education.

The pillars of our education system are:

  • We base our educational methodology on Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles, with the student always being the centre of our project.
  • Each child is unique and different from others, and therefore requires a personalised education.
  • It is an active pedagogic project that evolves year by year. For example, in 2008 we integrated the Philosophy for Children into all of our project activities to work on the development of children’s emotions.
  • The whole project revolves around achieving an environment where children feel happy, as only then can they develop at all levels.
  • The parent-school relationship is essential to a child’s development. Therefore, we seek to increase communication to the maximum extent possible to create the best possible learning environment for your child.

We help children to manage their emotions

Understanding emotions is crucial for children´s comprehensive development

A very important part of our education system, in order to facilitate the child’s development, is the use of “Philosophy for Children”. This methodology was originally developed by Matthew Lipman for the work with adolescents, and has subsequently been adapted to children of 2-6 years by Alaria Nursery Schools’ professional educators together with professors of psychology at the Universities of Montreal and Valencia.

Through the use of “Philosophy for Children” we want our students to question and reflect together about phenomena that interests them. Through a “research community” led by our teachers, we encourage the child to develop reflection, creativity … The ultimate goal we are pursuing is for your children to be able to develop social habits that allow them to communicate with others, and find strategies and solutions that enable them to resolve conflicts.

Studies evaluating the benefits of “Philosophy for Children” have found that its use helps children to develop critical thinking skills, improve their self-esteem, enjoy a better classroom environment and learn to be empathetic. Therefore, the “Philosophy for Children” has a significant effect on both the intellectual and social skills of children.

Multilingualism is crucial in our project

Multilingualism offers countless benefits for your children

In Alaria Nursery Schools we develop an English – Spanish – Chinese multilingual programme i) under a natural exposure scope and ii) with no “simultaneous translation” (Spanish, English and Chinese teams only speak their own native languages).

Additionally to evident social advantages of multilingualism for children, we also introduce it in our programme due to the benefits for your child’s healthy development at all levels: the vast majority of recent studies carried out by various universities around the world identify numerous advantages in teaching two or more languages to children aged 0 – 6 (in addition to the obvious social benefits related to communication):

  • There are obvious cognitive development benefits (UCLA-2010) caused by exposure to more than two languages, allowing children to develop stronger high thinking skills (metalinguistic awareness, creativity or sensitivity when communicating, for example). During recent years, several studies (Centers Health Studies of CRP and others) have showed that speaking different languages allows individuals to develop particular cognitive processes that help them to be more resistant to  the aging of the brain and cognitive decline in old age, thus delaying diseases like Alzheimer’s
  • Multilingualism significantly improves the child’s ability of abstraction (MIT and York University-2009/10) at an early age, compared to monolingual children. It greatly improves the children’s problem solving skills, as well as their logical thinking abilities
  • The development of proficiency in more than one language influences in a very significant way the child’s memory capacity (Baddeleyy Hitch 1986-2000)
  • The fact that multilingual children have better social skills has also been demonstrated  (UCLA-2010).  Some of these skills include greater social integration, multicultural skills and appreciation of other cultures

All these abilities are developed while the child is exposed to a new language, enormously helping the “synapses” process, the creation of new specific neuronal networks that do not develop if new language exposure does not take occur.

Furthermore, these neural networks derived from the child’s exposure to the new language will be used in the future not only for the development of language skills, but also to enhance other capabilities mentioned above.

Moreover, these new neural connections can only be formed in children aged 0 to 6-7: in other  words, there is a “window of opportunity”, if the child is not exposed to the stimuli that lead to the creation of new neural connections at that age, these cannot be developed in the future

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