Our learning environment is richly resourced and plays an important role in inspiring children to explore, wonder and create, with provocations purposefully set up for children to engage in complex learning experiences. Children’s wellbeing is our goal and is evident in our settled, secure children who have formed strong friendships which frequently become life-long relationships. 

We are fortunate to have children at Preschool who hail from all over the world, and it is exciting to celebrate their customs and language. Te Reo me nga tikanga Māori is embedded into our programme and our interactions with children, and our teachers are committed to honouring Te Tiriti ō Waitangi. We believe in weaving our bicultural heritage into a multicultural programme to support all learners. Te taiao/the environment is respected and utilised in our roles as kaitiakitanga/teachers and guardians.

Our goal is to create a life-long love of learning in each child. We believe in acknowledging children’s wonder and curiosity and providing them with opportunities to explore at their own pace. Learning opportunities are a response to children’s interests, with inquiry-based learning occurring through intentional and free play activities. Through exploration of intentional materials children are encouraged to construct their own knowledge and understanding.

Literacy and numeracy is embedded into everything we do, exposing children to emergent concepts as well as focused learning experiences. Peer learning and tuakana/teina concepts are encouraged as our mixed-age group of children support each other’s learning. We provide a variety of activities to maintain children interests and to appeal to different learning styles, as we strive to achieve tino rangatiratanga/self-determination for all children. 

We value the role that the arts play for providing children with endless opportunities to express themselves and their learning. We perceive art to be a fun-filled process of engagement/auahatanga that is creative, reflective, deliberate and that deepens and extends children’s learning. Children communicate and represent their understandings, emotions, discoveries and interests through encounters with a range of media, materials and art techniques. Our specially designed taupuni mahi toi/art studio allows for creative exploration all day long, with a skilled teacher present to facilitate meaningful art experiences. We love performing arts/toi whakaari and our annual Christmas show is the highlight of the year, representing our learning through poem, drama, song and dance.

Our teachers are partners in children’s learning, exploring side by side as they scaffold children through the process of questioning, hypothesizing, predicting, experimenting and representing their discoveries. We believe in the value of having more teachers than required to ensure that our children are involved in meaningful shared experiences and one-on-one learning. As part of our inquiry process, teachers are provoking children’s thinking as they question and research together. Our teachers are qualified, skilled and committed to ongoing professional inquiry to ensure their practice is always improving.

We value and respect children’s work and this is made evident through thoughtful displays throughout our centre. Teachers work one-on-one with children to communicate and document their learning. Our children’s portfolios provide a rich overview of their learning journey, featuring their teacher’s observations, photographs, stories, reflection and planning for learning as well as voices of the child and their family. We feel that documentation makes our children’s learning visible and provides opportunity for them to revisit their work.