Prebbleton Kindergarten

.We established Prebbleton Childcare in the year 2000 with the dream of creating a beautiful space for the youngest members of our community to be nurtured, cared for and educated. In the early days Prebbleton was a humble farming community on the outskirts of Christchurch. Over the years we have grown with our community opening Prebbleton Nursery in 2005 and Prebbleton Kindergarten in 2010.

We believe it is important for children to feel secure and valued when in our care. It is our ongoing vision to create 'The Next Best Place to Home'... home representing a place of sanctuary and comfort , a place where we can be with our family, relax, laugh, be heard and be accepted. This notion of home underpins the service we offer our families.

We feel it is important for children to engage with and explore a natural environment and to have fun while doing so. With this in mind we offer large, well considered play spaces, plenty of natural resources, large trees (attracting bird life) and an earthy colour palette throughout (to reflect our rural roots). We have organic gardens, chickens that lay eggs, rabbits, guinea pigs and budgies. Our pets are apart of our centre family.

We understand it is essential to have teachers who are warm, caring and demonstrate a passionate commitment to teaching children to be 'lifelong learners' all while fostering strong relationships with children and families. We have carefully selected our teaching team because they are able to demonstrate these qualities that are so important to our service.

With this in mind we hope you feel like you have come home when you walk through our door! We warmly welcome you and your family to our service...Our

Philosophy

At Kindergarten we believe children learn through their play and our teachers intentionally set up our environment to support and extend the learning and interests of children within our centre. We provide extended periods of play and a variety of child led and teacher initiated experiences. Teacher’s individual philosophies connect us as a team to provide a calm, caring and nurturing environment where children are respected and empowered through reciprocal and meaningful learning focused relationships.

Our teachers view children as holistic learners who have a natural sense of wonder and curiosity. We value children’s voices and encourage them to develop confidence in expressing themselves. We focus on teaching social and emotional competence through respectful relationships and problem-solving skills within our learning community. Our teachers also value developing their own skills and knowledge through professional development and collaborative relationships with whanau and the wider educational community.

We provide an environment that promotes your child’s health and well-being through connections to the natural world, through providing experiences in growing and harvesting food in our garden and through caring for our guinea pigs and birds. Kaitiakitanga is one of our values and this means we see ourselves as gaurdians of the environment. We model sustainable practice to children and teach respect for our wider natural environment through recycling and maintaining our worm farm. We strive to be the ‘next best place to home’ and offer regular baking activities to promote healthy eating and sharing of kai for every day and as well as celebrations.

Prebbleton Kindergarten supports your child to become 'school ready'. Located next door to Prebbleton Primary school, we support children’s transition to school through weekly visits to the school grounds and our close relationship with the school teaching team. We also facilitate a termly visit to the new entrance class. We promote 'school ready' skills throughout our curriculum supporting your child to develop and gain confidence in a broad spectrum of areas. These areas include self care, taking responsibility, building relationships with their peers, strengthening knowledge around literacy and numeracy, and  developing both fine and gross motor skills.