Our Programs

Woombye Childcare and Kindergarten (WCK) offers a pathway to school for children aged 15mths to school age. Enrolling at 15mths our explorers grow in heart and mind making strong connections and friendships within the Woombye ELC and wider community.   The longer children remain in the program, the greater their educational benefit and social/emotional development as they develop real life skills and knowledge, engage in deeper thinking and more challenging learning inquiries.  

 

Our inquiry-based programs value questioning, deep thinking, challenging, and building new knowledge.  – it encourages children to research for meaning, to be curious, use their imaginations and wonder about the why and how. 

 

Children learn in an active way therefore our programs offer opportunities for time and space to play, to engage in real life investigations, follow their interests, to revisit and hypotheses as they research how the world works and test their theories to deepen their knowledge and understanding. 

 

Learning through play and exploration we encourage children to:

• Act as initiators, investigators, explorers, problem solvers and creators.

• Ask questions, listen to the ideas of others and to develop their own hypotheses on a range of ideas and concepts.

• Develop a spirit of cooperation and a caring and responsible attitude towards everyone.

 

We believe that children have “a hundred languages” as quoted by Loris Malaguzzi, founder of Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood in Italy.  

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Therefore we guide children to represent their ideas through various symbolic communication such as drawing, painting, clay work, puppetry, gesture and body movement, storytelling, block construction, writing, socio-dramatic or pretend play and discussions.

 

Planning a rich and challenging curriculum. Including real life investigation, artistic and creative endeavours (visual arts, working with clay, wire, wood, wool, paint, photography, music, singing and dance.), steam, physicality, imaginative play and storytelling, friendships and social interactions and the development of literacy and numeracy skills.

 

Our program takes shape in many different forms. There are purposeful designed spaces for different age groups however we also allow for flow for mixed aged groups, and siblings to be together.  We follow predictable rituals and rhymes of the day providing children with uninterrupted time to for small group play, one to one engagement with an educator and time for each child to play and explore independently and collaboratively with their friends and peers.  

 

We understand the importance of collaboration, of planning, challenging, exploring, playing/tinkering with ideas/materials, and of making mistakes and reflecting.  Our teachers work together as co-learners and co-researchers in the exchanges of ideas and the articulation of new discoveries.  Support and guide children in decision-making about indoor and outdoor experiences they wish to explore.

 

We encourage partnerships with families inviting them to be an active part of their child's day, sharing ideas and aspects of home culture that can help to enrich our program.