Play is considered to be the natural learning environment for children and is the cornerstone of how young children learn. It is through play that children are able to explore ideas, solve problems, negotiate, make connections and engage with others. We allow children ample time to engage in both structured and unstructured play for the purpose of acquiring critical skills necessary for social, emotional, cognitive and physical development. Our educators use play based activities both indoors and outdoors in group and individual settings to broaden the children’s learning and help achieve their age specific milestones. 

Across all age groups, educators respond to children’ s interests by co-constructing learning stories based on developing children’ s knowledge on a topic that is meaningful to them. Using children’ s interests as the basis for our curriculum ensures that learning remains interesting and relevant.

An educational environment that is welcoming, inviting and engaging presents opportunity for deeper and more meaningful learning and development. Our environment promotes an overall sense of comfort and safety, a place where all children belong. Learning spaces are thoughtfully designed to provide children opportunities to acquire knowledge, skills,
dispositions and feelings. They are rich in
stimuli for purposeful activity and filled with choice, allowing children to engage with their individual interests.

We assist children in developing a healthy and respectful relationship with nature. A child’ s affinity to the natural environment grows out of regular
contact with, and play in, the natural world. By incorporating nature into daily learning experiences, we can encourage understanding of the natural environment, embedding important concepts of sustainability and supporting our children in becoming environmentally responsible individuals.

We create rich language and literacy experiences that respond to a child’s communication needs. Our experiences comprise the many language forms such as music, movement, dance, storytelling, visuals arts, media and drama, as well as talking, listening, viewing, reading and writing. These various experiences are aimed at moving children through the four stages of literacy development. In this sense the children in our care are guided towards becoming active, confident communicators by focussing on building vocabulary and language which supports problem-solving, and the ability to use one’s imagination – all of which are fundamental to the language a child needs going forward to school.

We respect the notion that children should have a say regarding matters that involve them. Inviting children to share their ‘ voice’ not only provides them with the opportunity to express themselves, but empowers them to become an active participant in the decision-making process for their learning.Communication can take many forms, including orally, written, through art or any other media a child may choose to make their thinking visible to others. Children are invited to express their voice in various ways, including both verbally and non-verbally, assisting them to achieve social, emotional, cognitive and language milestones of their age group and strengthening their overall learning experience.

The elements that comprise numeracy are space, measurement, prediction, estimation, problem solving, number, sorting, ordering and classifying. Children are encouraged to explore the world of mathematics daily through implementation of these concepts in the environment in which they interact, the resources and materials they engage with and the spontaneous and intentional learning experiences they experience.

This curriculum acknowledges the implementation of creative experiences as a means of developing a range of dispositions for learning, particularly the disposition of ‘creativity’. By engaging in the various creative arts of music, movement, visual arts and drama, children are able to explore new ideas or ways of interacting with materials. Children learn in different ways, therefore through an open-ended approach to the provision of resources and experiences, children are able to work towards developing multiple intelligences.

At Little Pines we challenge the children to question and search for answers. Our curriculum encourages each child’ s natural curiosity with hands-on activities that help lay the foundation for life-long learning and healthy development. From their earliest age children learn through what they see, touch, feel and manipulate. Providing safe, readily available materials that children can experiment with, is one of the most important steps towards developing a questioning and processing mind. In the preschool year, children focus on responding to the “who, what, when, how, why” questions about the world around them.

Our objective is to get kids moving and learning about physical activity! When children engage in physical activity, they are not only laying the foundation for developing fundamental movement skills, they are also learning important healthy habits in order to lead a healthy and active life. We promote active play throughout the day through both structured and unstructured indoor and outdoor play, incorporating physical sessions of 15 minutes per day into the curriculum. We believe that children need to be active every day to promote their healthy growth and development and we further encourage our educators to model positive healthy attitudes towards physical activity.