Our Philosohy
Creative Kids Preschool Philosophy
At Creative Kids Preschool, we value the community in which we live and work. We respect our heritage, our people, our land & our culture. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land – The Awabakal People, and pay respects to the elders both past, present and emerging. We reside within the Galgabba School Community, and we respect the knowledge and links to the land of this community.
All of the staff at Creative Kids Preschool are high-quality Educators. Our backgrounds and experiences vary, but our quality of teaching is outstanding. The educators adhere to the National Regulations and the National Quality Framework and are guided by the Early Years Learning Framework. We take from it the foundation which influences our teaching, planning, observations and goals, our school readiness program, our preschool program and our interactions. As part of our development as a quality centre, we are guided by the laws set in the regulations, the National Quality Standards, ACECQA, our policies and our Educational Leader. These are important as they make our service deliver consistent quality of care. We rely on these, to provide guidance, motivation, and reference for our implementation of our program and the safety of our centre for children, staff and families.
We recognise the rights of children to be happy, safe and supported. We value the role of families as children’s first teachers. We use our knowledge of child development and developmental theorists to guide our interactions with families and the community.
Our curriculum and teaching are built from a combination of different methods that allow teachers to balance between instructional teaching and constructive teaching based not on one theorist but many, with emphasis on theorists Vygotsky and Gardener. We believe as they do, that children learn through play and creativity, and that learning can be guided and supported by peers and teachers and that each child is an individual and learns at their own pace.
We place high value on the environment in which we learn and teach. We aim to teach a love for our land, through curiosity, exploration and the sharing of knowledge. Our land is precious, and all of our practises impact upon it. We are committed to the sustainability of our service and educating staff, children and families about our impact on the land and how to reduce, re-use and recycle. We actively choose sustainable products and resources, we implement sustainable practices daily and we document and share this information with families as a continuous project.
We aim to ensure that children are given varied opportunities to play and learn and that, as Educators, we can provide different levels of support, depending on the needs of the child/children. We have a vast support network of professionals who can support us in our work with children with special needs. Our staff have a strong understanding of children with a wide range of disabilities including autism and the different types of teaching and learning required for these children. Our environment and our teaching is always adaptable and we strive for the best outcomes for all children and their families. We believe that it is our responsibility to consider our own role in children’s development through our experiences, biases and strengths. It is also necessary to review the understandings of child development and learning with parents, so that our program is also meeting the needs of families. We have an open-door policy at Creative Kids Preschool. Parents and families, community and other agencies are welcome anytime. Families are able to read documentation including our quality improvement plan, program, policies, our projects, reflections, and their own child’s portfolio. All staff are available to discuss all aspects of the centre. As we are a small centre, some staff have more expertise in a particular area.
Our programming cycle relies on our observations of children. We believe that play-based learning is essential to children’s understanding of their world and culture. We listen to and observe the children during play. We note who the child plays with, and the nature of that play. Observations are made about the skills and interests of the child, their culture, as well as concepts that we need to work on. This emergent curriculum, allows staff to use these observations to reflect on, then to plan activities that teach, consolidate, or extend knowledge.
We endeavour to create environments that are creative, social and hands on, based on discovery learning and combine language and social skills. At Creative Kids Preschool, we believe that by providing all of these key elements, we can create a service which provides rich learning and quality care.