Children's Learning

Our curriculum provides tamariki with a range of experiences and opportunities to enhance and extend their learning and development – both indoors and outdoors, individually and in groups.

Using the environment as the third teacher, kaiako (teachers) strive to create beautiful, magical, and wondrous play spaces.  An environment that is full of wonder, discovery and intrigue, and places that feel calm and tranquil, loved, and respected.   

We are lucky to have a seperate building for our Nursery where we pride ourselves in providing a calm, unhurried, respectful, and caring environment where nothing is done “to” a child - it was done “with” the child. The care routines (nappy change, sleep, feeding, bottles) are calm and these times are used as teaching moments to communicate with the child. The Nursery has lots of fun toys and activities and great ratios with 4 teachers and licensed for 12 children. 

Preschool.  Our wonderful preschool children spend their time exploring and discovering new learning opportunities.

Kaiako draw out and explore children’s current knowledge, emergent understandings, ideas and working theories (the focus of Reggio Emilia’s inquiry work with children, and prominent in Te Whāriki) as the basis for extending and acquiring new skills, knowledge and dispositions. 

Kaiako identify learning which is to be expanded and explored further through individual assessment and projects.

A rich language environment. To best support children’s learning and development, kaiako focus on listening, extending children’s thoughts and knowledge, and co-constructing meanings together through processes of knowledge sharing and exchange, as in the Reggio Emilia approach and in Te Whāriki. Open-ended questioning and sustained shared thinking are associated with children’s greater academic progress. Set the environment to in courage book reading, inspire storytelling, materials for writing,

The hundred languages are a metaphor for communication and emphasizes the importance of providing children with one hundred ways to share their thinking of the world around them. Kaiako support and extend children’s learning as they go back and forth between verbal discussions and symbolic representations.  They are encouraged to explore all forms of symbolic representations – drawing, painting, sculptures, building, dance etc. Each representation requiring the children to further explain their thinking and giving rise to new interpretations and ideas.

Our curriculum supports our 2-year-olds as they are beginning to grasp more complex skills and gaining a greater sense of self.  To support their learning and provide a special time for them we have Twinkles group time before lunch. This time is used to create a sense of belonging and togetherness, to talk together, sing and dance, to be introduced to new concepts and ideas, share in learning experiences, and collaborate.