Great Minds Early Childhood Center

Great Minds Early Childhood Center is a nursery in Trade Centre, Dubai offering the Montessori curriculum. Areti Panagiotou, the manager of the nursery, had a passion for education from an early age when as a primary school girl used to help in her mother’s KG classroom. She completed a BA degree in Early Years education and then she went on to do a postgraduate course and MSc in Speech and Language therapy in City University of London, U.K. She worked in the UK as a Speech and Language Therapist and in Greece as an Early Years Teacher. Later qualifying as a Montessori trained teacher she wanted to combine her knowledge to create a unique nursery setting in Dubai. With the strong support of her family, after over 8 years of working with special needs children at the Dubai Centre for Special Needs she felt the time was right to help other children reach their full potential – and the idea for Great Minds Early Childhood Center was born.

Great Minds Early Childhood Center is located behind Box Park next to City Walk. The nursery uses the Montessori approach to promote children’s social, cognitive and physical development. The approach is child centered with strong respect towards the individual's personality. The objective is to provide children a happy and safe environment which will promote their natural growth, in line with their intrinsic sensitive periods of development. Great Minds Early Childhood Center's vision is to see children becoming happy, confident and intelligent human beings. Little People Great Minds.

Great Minds Early Childhood Center is the only nursery in Dubai that has appointed a full time Speech and Language therapist. The speech therapist's role is to work closely with the teachers to support the educational program and identify those children who have language and communication difficulties. Assessment, consultation and home programs are offered to those children as well as monitoring of their progress in the nursery setting. In addition there is close co-operation with parents and training programs on communication and language development are offered.

In mainstream schools you have language/learning support units, so why not in nurseries?