Our Approach
All children are intrinsically motivated to learn. They absorb knowledge without effort when provided with the right kinds of activities at the right time in their development.
Half the Sky has brought together educators and child development experts from both East and West, and developed curricula for all four of its programs. This blended approach takes the very best from contemporary Chinese methods and combines it with a western approach to early education that seems particularly suited to address the special needs of institutionalized children.
From the West, Half the Sky’s programs draw from Italy’s Reggio Emilia approach to enhancing child development. The Reggio approach was founded on the principles of child-centered learning. Children learn best when specially trained adult caregivers provide responsive care, following the child’s interests rather than a set-in-concrete curriculum.
Half the Sky’s Reggio-inspired programs endeavor, from birth onward, to create holistic communities in which each child's intellectual, emotional and social potential is carefully cultivated and guided through long-term projects, individual attention, active learning and physical play.
From the East, Half the Sky programs incorporate Chinese educational mandates that children learn about the arts, the sciences, language, social development, and health education. These areas are designed to adhere to Chinese cultural and social values, as well as to meet the global needs of the 21st century.
By incorporating the Chinese emphasis on mandated learning areas with the active learning approach of Reggio Emilia, children are free to actively explore all areas of the Chinese curriculum.
Documentation is an essential part of all programs at Half the Sky. Whether in classroom or infant center or family village or out in the community, each activity, each milestone, each reflection or adventure or discovery is captured through transcriptions of children's remarks and discussions, video journals, photographs, video, artworks and representation in many media.
And every Half the Sky child, infant to teenager, retains a tangible record or "memory book" to carry with her beyond the institution—creating, in effect, a personal history for the child who lacks one.
