Nursery

 Nursery Philosophy

We work to provide a warm, safe, caring, stimulating environment that meets the developmental needs of each child.  We seek to know each child, based on observation and interaction and provide experiences that meet each child’s unique interests and development.

We believe that play is essential to young children’s learning.  We acknowledge and support children’s interests and strengths to enhance and facilitate their learning process.  We endeavour to meet the need of children’s natural curiosity by providing opportunities for them to experiment, discover, solve problems and find out about themselves, other people and the world around them.

We believe that children should be given time to grow, to try, to reflect and to experience success so that they are able to face future challenges, build on their strengths and accept their individual limitations without fear of failure or loss of self-esteem.

We believe that each child comes to the nursery with a different set of experiences, knowledge and interests and we seek to build on the child’s home experience and acknowledge the range of diverse lifestyles of families.  The family is valued and their diverse backgrounds are accepted, empowered and reflected in our programs. Through this we support and encourage the interest and involvement of parents to share in, contribute and feel part of their child’s experience in the nursery.  Parents are actively encouraged to monitor, evaluate and add to our program, policies and portfolios.  We strongly believe and recognise the importance of parent participation and encourage open, positive and trusting relationships between parents and educators.

We believe children should be encouraged to be independent learners and to begin to develop an ability to initiate and control their own play experiences and learning while being facilitated, supported and guided by qualified and experienced early childhood professionals/educators through the implementation of national law, national regulations and the Early Years Learning Framework.

The program in the nursery is child focused and interest based and incorporates intentional teaching practices.  We acknowledge that young children are powerful, resourceful, imaginative, creative and enthusiastic learners and bring with them a strong ability to control their own learning.  By providing a happy, safe, fun and stimulating environment we believe children become active learners while developing independence and self-esteem. Children are encouraged to feel confident and secure at all times.

Our highly qualified and experienced early childhood educators aim to achieve excellence in their role as facilitators, role models and nurturers of young children’s learning and development.

Our role of Nurturing an Educating our babies

How do our children learn ? 

The children in the nursery are encouraged to explore through the use of their senses and messy play activities.  Our senses are our guide through the world around us and for babies and young children they provide endless opportunity for fascinating discovery.

Simply gazing at a colourful toy, hearing a bird sing (during outdoor play), smelling a flower, tasting a juicy orange (during a cooking experience), smearing paint all over the place as they finger paint, splashing and scooping goop or touching a furry soft toy are all opportunities for sensory learning about the world.

Young children in the nursery learn best when they can experience new things with all their senses.  They need to see, hear, feel, touch, smell and sometimes even taste a learning material in order to really understand if fully.  This is fully encouraged and explored within the nursery environment.

Our Learning Environment

Babies are both vulnerable and competent.  Babies’ first attachments within their families and within other trusting relationships provide them with a secure base for exploration and learning.  This attachment and competence is further developed by forming a partnership with families and through encouraging caring relationships with all children, constant communication with carers and/or families, parent feedback, orientation forms and visits, documentation and providing a stimulating and colourful environment for the children to explore through the use sensory materials, dramatic play, construction, science & cooking, quiet areas and routine times (such as meal times and nappy change).

Outdoor learning spaces are an important part of learning in the nursery.  The nursery children have their own yard enabling the children to freely explore without the interference from older and bigger children.  This allows the children to feel safe and secure in their exploration of the outdoor environment.  The nursery yard provides opportunities for open ended interactions, spontaneity, risk taking, exploration, discovery and connection with nature, other children and educators.

Group and music time is another important part of the nursery environment.  The children are encouraged to join the group for stories, singing/fingerplays, music and dance.  Children are free to choose whether they participate within the group time experience.  Not only are these times fun but creative movement expands a child’s imagination, physical skills and provides an interactive activity that develops the whole child.  Musical play allows children to express themselves, experiment with creativity and develop sensory and motor skills.

Meal times are an important part of the day in the nursery.  Not only is it necessary to refuel busy bodies for further exploration but it provides wonderful opportunities for social interaction, development of self-help  skills ,such as feeding, refinement of existing fine motor skills and the development of an understanding of routines.  All the nursery high chairs are at the same level at the table allowing all children to interact with each other at meal times, regardless of age or size.  This results in wonderful language and social interaction between children and between children and educators.  Young babies are assisted to sit at the table at meal times by using pillows to help prop and support them or by sitting on an educators lap.  Even children who are not yet eating solids are encouraged to sit at the meal table with the help of educators to provide them with the opportunities of social interaction and inclusion in daily activities.

Within the nursery each staff member has a focus group of children who they are primarily responsible for observing and programming for.  The staff are constantly engaged in a cycle of observation, evaluation and planning throughout the day.  The cycle begins with the staff member carefully observing and documenting particular aspects of a child’s development as they engage in a range of experiences.  These observations are recorded and then evaluated against the “Early Years Learning Framework’ which is a national early childhood curriculum.  Based on the evaluation, the staff will plan future experiences to extend on your child’s current skills, interests and stages of development and then return to the initial observation stage of the cycle.  This style of curriculum requires staff and the room to be flexible and responsive to the current, ever evolving needs and interests of each individual child and the group as a whole.