By Atduko Hattori and Yoshitaka Okada | Vice Director of the Board and Board Representayti
On Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016, Kirain Kids (KK) opened a mobile toy library (Picture 1), which provides opportunities for children to play with toys not used in diverse childcare centers over weekend. Children were really enjoying to play with toys, even forgetting where their parents were.
Rikuzen Takata City opened this month a new childcare center, since the number of new born babies is increasing to about 100 every year. Now, the city has three childcare centers and one parent-child play circle (KK). They all offer services to both parents and children, while three childcare centers are city-operated, having childcare specialist and nurses and providing advises to children. They are operated by semi-professional staffs. In contrast, KK is rather operated by people who have experiences in childrearing and high motivation. The city now has a wonderful environment for children, and parents can choose which childcare center to go.
KK has been contributing significantly to developing such environment. And many childcare centers follow the pioneering KK. Since it is a private operation, it has a strength of flexibly organizing programs and events as children’s needs and interests change. When events are offered, usually twice more children participate than the number KK usual have in weekday operations. Thus, it is important for KK to organize events at least once a week, since they effectively bring joyful interactions between children and parents. Naturally, weekend evens impose extra works for its staff.
One interesting phenomenon is that when mothers from foreign countries participate such evens, they all show quite different ways to solve children’s fightd over toys. Mothers from foreigncountries are learning how Japanese come to settle conflicts, while Japanese mothers also learn different ways of raising children. This rich educational environment is a pride for the staff to keep organizing diverse programs in KK.
The Second KK’s Athletic Meeting for toddler between age zero and two was held this fall, and the number of participants increased twice relative to the last year, counting twenty-four pairs of parents and children. Quick responses to participate this event came from the neighboring communities, suggesting quite effective dissemination of the even information. Renting a bigger community center also encouraged the participation of grandparents and other family members. KK worked so hard that they even developed an event for infants. Since KK offered a highly enjoyable and heart-warming even to the communities of this region, a local newspaper also reported this even with pictures of smiling children.
Also, the first Apple Picking Event was also well appreciated by KK members. In the past, KK was taking children for excursion in a bus. However, due to the budget cut, this year they changed their way of thinking and took children to a neighboring place in the city. Since Rikuzen Takata is a well-known city for a fairly large number of apple orchards, they went to pick apples and made desserts from pickled apples. The lack of the budget generated an opportunity to think about an interesting idea.
Now, the temporary shop arcade where they currently operate will be sustained for the next two years. Nobody knows what is going to happen after that. A housing area is currently developed on a higher ground with noises and dusts of dump cars going back and forth. They may have to think their future by keeping close eyes on changes taking place in the city.
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