Our Philosophy
Vision
Powerful Learners – Children have the dispositions to approach their learning and their future confidently.
Values
Joyfulness, Wonder & Creativity.
Our image of the child
We believe that children are competent and capable learners with many skills, interests and abilities. They come to us with learning dispositions and preferences and we can support, extend and strengthen these within our learning environment. We endeavor to work closely with the families and carers of our children as their first educators. Children come to us with the culture of their family and we nurture, support and strengthen their home experiences.
We believe that children need to experience the wonder of learning through play and that their natural curiosity, creativity and ability to experiment and problem solve is central to their learning. We believe that learning should be fun and joyful and that children need this fun and joy to learn in a positive environment. We value long periods of uninterrupted play, which support children to develop and extend theories and ideas about their learning. Documentation of learning allows children’s voices to be heard.
We believe that the building of strong, positive relationships is central to a child’s sense of well-being and ability to learn. We also believe that children can be and are active citizens and we will support them to be involved in their own learning and in their community.
Outdoor Learning and Nature Play
We believe that children should spend most of their waking time outdoors and that learning outdoors provides many challenges and opportunities for involvement in real life learning. When learning outdoors children will:
- Take risks and learn to assess their abilities and limits
- Develop resilience and problem solving skills
- Engage with nature and learn to love and care for the environment
- Collaborate with their peers on projects that are meaningful and challenging
- Learn about sustainable practices in a natural and integrated way.
Educators: We will create a joyful, interesting, creative and open-ended learning environment indoors and outdoors that supports learning through play. We see the environment as the third educator and we will continually create a learning environment that is responsive to children’s needs.
Our work and research into the Playful Pedagogies over the last three years will inform our practice.
Educators will listen to children, document their learning and reflect upon this to plan for future learning. Educators will engage with the local community and the environment around us to provoke thinking and wondering. Responsive and reflective relationships with children and families will be central to our practice and we will work as a team to support and complement each other in our work. We will continually reflect upon and research our practice and be lifelong learners alongside the children.