Hestia after-school care in Amsterdam, Amstelveen and Driemond

At the Hestia after-school care we play a lot in our natural gardens. Rain or shine. Being outside, with fresh air, in nature, is good for children. It helps them release energy, builds resistance and connects them with how nature changes through the seasons. These seasons also play a major role in the themes we have. Crafting with autumn leaves, vegetable garden lessons about vegetables in the different seasons or hollowing out pumpkins for Halloween. It is like a common thread within our after-school care. We also go on trips to natural playgrounds, meadows around the location or a park nearby.

“By the age of 4, every child at Hestia has seen Rembrandt’s Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum”. We think it is important to show children the world around them. So we regularly take them on cultural excursions or into nature. This means that children from the after-school care often go to the museum or a theatre performance with us.

There is also a lot of room for creativity and sharing passions of the pedagogical staff in the group. Think of art, music, cooking and baking, vegetable gardening, history. We are inspired by what is going on with the children and tie in with important moments in the year. For example, we have a lantern night, we celebrate Halloween and there are all kinds of cultural festivals that we celebrate together with parents. We also involve parents in this and we celebrate it together.

Hestia is a melting pot of diverse cultures and different backgrounds. We have a mix of Dutch-speaking families and many foreign families who have come to Amsterdam on an expat basis, for example. Our bilingual offering is preferred by international parents and Dutch parents because they believe that their child benefits from it. We believe that we need a more inclusive society in which diversity is celebrated. That is why children from all over the world are brought together from a young age to learn from each other and connect.

Inclusion and diversity are paramount at our locations. Hestia is a home for all children, parents and employees. At Hestia, it is often the case that children speak another home language or languages ​​in addition to English and Dutch. We welcome these home languages ​​at our locations. This is reflected in the Home language corners at the locations, and in our advice to parents to always speak their own language with their children. We encourage curiosity about what we do not know and create respect for perspectives that are different from ours. We celebrate cultural festivals such as Keti Koti and invite parents to share their favorite meal from their home country with us at the annual festival. Read more about our bilingual childcare here.

Our locations are all light and spacious. We think it is important that the spaces feel homely and warm so that children, parents and our employees simply like to be there. We also try to create a community space at each location where children, pedagogical employees and parents can meet and talk to each other. The daycare centres also always have a kitchen where fresh food is prepared for the children or snacks are baked together. There is also a large garden with natural play materials for all the children at the daycare centre. In addition, we have a large vegetable garden where vegetables and fruit are grown together with the children and then processed into the meals.

At Hestia, we are very committed to the well-being of society and the planet. That is why we have set ourselves the goal of really thinking about all aspects of our organization on how we can do this in a sustainable and inclusive way. We are proud to be the first childcare center in the Netherlands to be in the Bcorp certification process. Following the high standards of Bcorp will help us to become better every day and to improve our way of working in a sustainable, inclusive way. Read more about the sustainability developments within Hestia here.