This is a thorough, detailed, and comprehensive guide to a new way of working with out-of-home care of young children from an anthroposophical perspective. Part One gives a picture of how the day nursery can support the development of the child through an understanding of the fourfold human sheaths, emulating the archetypal home. Part Two goes into further detail about practical matters, including food, sleep, festivals, and more. Many examples from the author's groundbreaking work at Awhina Day Nursery and Kindergarten in New Zealand, as well as charming photographs of the Awhina children, are included. Childcare has become more readily available in the past few decades, growing from something relatively small to a burgeoning "industry." It has become a product-oriented industry, which sees infants and young children cared for in group situations, usually defined by age and with as many as thirty children, sometimes more, in any one group. In New Zealand, childcare is strongly supported by a government that is encouraging one could almost say pressuring mothers back into the workforce, ostensibly for the good of the women and the country . . . but what about the children? This is a book about childcare from a different perspective. It is about the life of the family, of which the child is an intrinsic part. The child cannot be separated off from the family when we discuss childcare. This book is about supporting the family of today by offering a form of childcare that both respects and emulates the home a form of childcare that embraces nurturing practices of the home and family, and at the same time provides a role model for the parent. --From the Introduction by Bernadette Raichle