This paper describes the Netherlands' Pyramid Project, a classroom-based early intervention program which integrates nursery school and primary school organization and content for 3- to 6-year-olds who need special support, such as ethnic or language minority (allochtone) children and children from disadvantaged situations. Section 1 of the paper presents the theoretical underpinnings of the program and its complementary teaching model as built on four basic concepts: (1) child's initiative, focusing on children's play with objects and other children; (2) teacher's initiative, including scaffolding to facilitate learning and helping children to work strategically; (3) psychological nearness, providing children with a feeling of being protected and safe through the actual or psychological presence of a sensitive and responsive teacher; and (4) psychological distance, understanding that objects can be represented by something other than the objects themselves. Section 2 outlines how the basic concepts are operationalized in the development of a total program to facilitate social-emotional, personality, creativity, motor, perceptual, language, and cognitive development and orientation in space and time; the free and focused program components; projects to ensure that all developmental areas are presented in a balanced way; observation and testing procedures; preventive and remedial tutoring; attention for allochtone children; and parent involvement. Sections 3 and 4 of the paper describe initial evaluation results, indicating that the first year of the project has been successful in terms of content and organization. (Contains 32 references.) (KB)