Hello! We are Ron & Grace, the devoted owners of Tinkerseeds Children's Workshop. We’re an American expat couple from New York City and advocates of progressive education for young children that delivers on the promise of intentional and playful learning experiences.
The journey for this early childhood school started back in America, where we decided to start a family together. As we explored what it meant to be parents, we devoured parenting books and visited daycares and preschools around the city. Before long, we were fascinated with what we learned about education and took a deeper look into curriculum, pedagogy, and learning theory.
At the start of 2015, we arrived with a vision of education that focuses on building meaningful learning experiences, with children playing an important role in their own education. By August 2016, we opened our first early childhood school in Taipei, Little Seeds Academy, and then in April 2019 opened our second school, Tinkerseeds Children’s Workshop.
Ron has a Master of Science in Early Childhood Education (MSEd) from Erikson Institute (Chicago, USA). He completed his graduate studies in child development, early childhood curriculum and instruction, and also specialized in language and literacy learning in young children from birth to age 8 (birth through grade 2). Grace holds dual bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and early childhood education. She is also a licensed preschool educator and holds a preschool director certification in Taiwan.
We learned about the giants in the field, like John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Lev Vygotsky, and of course, Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach in Italy. This was an eye-opening experience and it led us into the inspiring world of what's possible when we give children (and teachers) the time and space to co-construct knowledge.
By the time our first child was born, we had decided to open our own progressive, Reggio Emilia-inspired early childhood schools. Coincidentally, Grace’s parents have been running preschools throughout Taipei, Taiwan for over 40 years. A supportive nudge from them was all that we needed to fly across the world to Taiwan to start our journey to design and build our dream schools.
We bring a unique approach to early childhood education, informed by our academic training and research, our everyday lives as parents of 3 children, and our practical experience working in our thriving early childhood schools.
