OUR PHILOSOPHY

At Box Hill South Pre School we believe:

Children are unique individuals with their own background experiences, distinctive character, interests, likes, dislikes abilities and needs.
We welcome all children to our kindergarten, taking time to get to know, understand and value each child individually and build positive relationships with each child.

Influences from both home and kindergarten help to shape children's development. There are stages of development that children move through at their own pace and in their own way.

We value working collaboratively with parents and families, creating an environment where children, parents and families feel welcome, respected and supported, creating programs to meet all children's developmental needs.

Play is work, represents children's way of learning and that children learn through active exploration in a caring, relaxed and safe environment

We allow the children time to engage in active, hands on, open-ended play-based learning experiences that are child initiated, child directed and educator supported.

Play allows children the perfect opportunity to develop life skills they will require to be successful later on in life.

So we give the children many opportunities to develop a broad range of skills needed throughout life and for learning.

Value and respect the multicultural nature of Australian society.
We create learning environments that give each child opportunities to explore his/her cultural heritage and develop an appreciation of the multicultural nature of our society.

"Life-long" learning for all.

We create varied opportunities for children, parents, families and educators to continue to learn in respectful and supportive ways.

We endeavour to present ourselves to the children as warm, caring, positive, flexible people who greet them individually with a smile. We take time to sit, guide, talk and have fun with them in a relaxed and unhurried manner.

The meaning of the word "kindergarten" comes from the German word meaning:

Kinder - child's

Garten - garden

With this in mind, we plan to provide a true children's garden for all the developing young children in our groups and let them flourish!

Our Program

Our planned play based programs cater for the development of each child and the group as a whole.

They allow for free play/self selected experiences by the children as well as teacher initiated /structured small and whole group learning experiences.

The emphasis is on informal, indirect teaching centring on play motivated by interest.

Our programs aim to give each child a broad and rounded kindergarten educational experience that caters for the needs of the whole child, including their development in the areas of

identity (emotional development)
community (social development)
well being (self care skills)
learning (cognitive development)
communication (language development)

The children are given many opportunities to develop early maths, science and literacy skills, along with learning life skills they can use throughout life.

Most importantly the children are given lots of time to explore the joys of learning and experience what it is like to be an effective learner.

We view the whole kindergarten as space for learning and use it to create a happy, caring and relaxed atmosphere in an environment that is attractive, stimulating, safe and fun!

The programs developed by our teaching teams are created around the practice, principles and outcomes of the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework and National Quality Standards.