Every program is built around one question. What does this child need right now, at this exact stage of their development?
Before a child is ready for a classroom without you in it, they are ready for something else entirely, time spent learning alongside you.
Roots is where many Kawa families begin. It is not a daily program. A parent or caregiver and their toddler attend together, a few sessions each week in a small batch of families. There is no drop-off, no separation, no expectation that a child under two should yet be ready for either. The session is simply a space for a toddler to explore, and for a parent to watch, follow and learn alongside an educator who has spent years studying what very young children need.
What happens in a sessionA toddler’s sense of security comes first from the people who stay close. Roots builds on that closeness rather than asking a child to do without it before they are ready.
| Age Range | Under 2 years |
| Attendance | With a parent or caregiver |
| Frequency | 3 sessions a week, by batch |
| Screens | None, ever |
Before a child can wonder, they need to feel safe. Before they can create, they need to feel seen.
The brain develops faster in the first three years than at any other point in human life. What surrounds a child in this window shapes neural pathways that influence everything which follows. Foundations is designed with the full weight of that knowledge. Small groups. Unhurried rhythms. Educators who observe before they intervene.
Children in Foundations are not being prepared for learning. They are already learning the most important things they will ever learn.
What children experienceThe child who is securely attached explores more boldly, recovers more quickly, and learns more deeply. Everything in Foundations serves this truth.
| Age Range | 12 months to 3 years |
| Group Size | Small, carefully managed |
| Screens | None, ever |
| Approach | Relationship-centred |
Three-year-olds ask over 70 questions a day. Most environments answer them. Kawa builds on them.
Three is the age of why. Children at this stage are primed for noticing, comparing, imagining and making meaning from everything around them. Most settings quietly flatten this with routines designed for compliance rather than curiosity. Discovery channels this instinct into open-ended exploration across nature, story, materials, music and early mathematical thinking.
What children experienceThe child who learns that their questions lead somewhere interesting becomes the adult who keeps asking them. Discovery is where that story begins.
| Age Range | 3 to 4 years |
| Method | Inquiry and project-led |
| Screens | None, ever |
| Hours | 9:00 am to 1:00 pm |
The habits of mind that make extraordinary thinkers don’t form at fourteen. They form at four and five.
Children at this age can hold ideas, compare them and revise them. They begin to understand that being wrong is not a failure. It is a step. A question about a seed becomes a question about time. A question about time opens into mathematics, science and story, sometimes in the same afternoon. Children transition from learning about the world to thinking about it.
What children experienceWe are not building children who know the right answers. We are building children who know what questions to ask and how to stay with them long enough to find out.
| Age Range | 4 to 5 years |
| Focus | Thinking and metacognition |
| Screens | None, ever |
| Approach | Cross-disciplinary |
Most children spend their first six years being told what to do. Leadership is Kawa’s answer to what those years could be instead.
In their final year at Kawa, children are not prepared for school. They are prepared for the world. Children who practice genuine ownership over their time, their choices and their mistakes develop the kind of self-knowledge and confidence that no curriculum can manufacture. By the time they leave Kawa, they know what it feels like to be capable.
What children experienceA child who leaves Kawa knowing what they are capable of will walk into any classroom, any challenge and any room in the world with something money cannot buy, an unshakeable sense of self.
| Age Range | 5 to 6 years |
| Signature | Ownership and mentorship |
| Screens | None, ever |
| Output | Portfolio and presentation |
Tell us about your child and we will share which program is the right starting point.