Balloon Room
(3 months to 2 years)
Staff Ratio: 1:4
Places: 16 children each day
Philosophy:
In the Balloon Room we believe that establishing and maintaining secure, nurturing relationships is vital during children’s formative years. This helps us to provide quality care and guidance through their early learning and development. We strive to take one-on-one time with children in order to develop these relationships. The values of the Balloon Room families are so important to us, and they align with our values as a team of educators. This leads to a curriculum that promotes fun, creativity, kindness, happiness and safety. Our learning environment provides a safe space where children can become connected with the world around them through natural exploration and engagement in their learning experiences. We allow children to explore their sense of wonderment and curiosity by forging a connection with the surrounding community. We believe that providing a sense of peace and quiet will help children to develop the skills needed to understand their own emotions, so we create a calm atmosphere and engage in moments of mindfulness each day to assist with self-regulation. We promote the development of the children’s positive self-esteem and attitude by giving them the opportunity to make choices about their learning, routines and play by responding to their cues and, when they are ready, helping them to express their needs through non-verbal and verbal language. We believe that allowing these choices will support the children in reaching their full potential.
The Balloon Room is a safe and happy space where children are nurtured and supported to learn and develop at their own pace.
Sunshine Room
(2-3 years)
Staff Ratio: 1:5
Places: 19 children each day
Philosophy:
In the Sunshine Room we believe in forming and maintaining strong relationships with children and families, respecting their values and including them within our curriculum. We put a strong focus on fostering children’s freedom to have fun, question, investigate, explore and discover more about themselves and their world. This in turn helps the children to develop care and respect for others, as well as their own confidence and self-identities. In turn we hope to foster a sense of belonging and equality. We feel strongly about children’s right to explore the world around them and we encourage this through an enriched, inclusive and safe learning environment, where children are provided with guidance and encouragement through challenging experiences order to reach their potential. The Sunshine Room educators put an emphasis on understanding each child’s culture, background, skills and interests, hearing their voices and incorporating them into the curriculum.
We admire children’s creativity and support them in making choices about their own play, routines and learning experiences.
Rainbow Room
(3-5 years)
Staff Ratio: 1:10
Places: 25 children each day
Philosophy:
In the Rainbow Room we strive to provide an inclusive environment, reflective of our relationships with children and families and their cultures and values within the room. These include kindness, curiosity, happiness and respect for each other and the environment. We encourage all children to engage in critical thinking, questioning and problem solving. This is facilitated, observed and assessed through child initiated and meaningful play opportunities, intentional teaching, and inquiry-based learning opportunities. In turn we are supporting children to see their own potential and helping them to reach for it, no matter how challenging. We believe in supporting all children equally in developing resilience, positive relationships and friendships, promoted through fun and engaging learning experiences that are tailored to the children’s interests and needs. Our learning environment enables the development of agency, exploration and calculated risk taking. We provide an environment where children can feel safe and nurtured while building resilience and positive interactions by assisting children with regulating their emotions through the use of oral language and problem-solving skills. We embrace children’s curious minds and children are always given the opportunity to make decisions about their play, routines and learning experiences. We recognise that every child is unique and enjoy the fact that children can often enlighten us with the direction in which they steer their own learning experiences. Patience is practised in order to support children in learning in their own way and at their own pace. We acknowledge parents as children’s first teachers and are inspired to utilise any input we are given.