Childcare options in Glen Innes

BestStart Apirana Avenue offers quality childcare and education in Glen Innes. Our centre is located at the St Heliers Bay Road end of Apirana Avenue and is within minutes of St Heliers, Glendowie and the train station.

Growing Local Heroes

At BestStart Apirana Ave, we like to celebrate our local everyday heroes. We want to grow great members of the the Glen Innes community. We are on this journey together, where families and the local community share knowledge, passion, and skills to help inspire our heroes to achieve greatness! Heroes come in different shapes and sizes, and with many different powers to benefit our community and society as a whole.

We focus on learning through play to grow the positive emotional and social skills that create happy, healthy adults. By pretending, creating and exploring, children can use their imagination to create playful scenarios with each other and become whatever their hearts desire. They take journeys through jungles, explore the natural environment, become scientists and masters of the universe- all before lunchtime! Through this play, children learn about the world around them, take turns, problem solve, feel emotions and engage with each other.

At Best Start Apirana Ave we support children in creative and critical thought processes throughout their day. We provide engaging and enriched experiences that introduce children to early literacy and numeracy which are guided by Te Whariki and the New Zealand Curriculum. By linking the Be School Ready program to Te Whariki and the New Zealand curriculum it means that the children will have a seamless transition from day care to school.

We nurture children to become confident learning citizens by supporting them to think clearly and solve problems as individuals, to have the confidence to ask questions and expand their knowledge. Children who start school feeling confident and capable are better placed to have learning success for life. They will achieve greatness; they will inspire others with their knowledge and skills and they will have developed all the tools to achieve their goals, dreams, and aspirations successfully. 

Who is BestStart?

BestStart is for families who want more from early-childhood education. Safe, nurturing and educationally focused, we’re committed to growing caring people with curious minds.

Together we teach, learn and nurture.

Our vision is to work in partnership with families, whanau and communities to enable children to achieve their learning potential.

Ko tō mātou tirohanga hei mahi ngātahi i te taha o ngā whānau me ngā hāpori, kia āwhinatia ngā tamariki, kia tū pito mata ai rāatou, hei rangatira mō āpōpō.

We are committed to being a progressive and responsive leader in early-childhood education. We do this by enhancing our services, investing in our people, developing our support structure and continuously improving the educational outcomes and experiences of our children, families and the communities we serve.

Some facts:

• We’re licensed to educate and care for 15,000 full-time children daily.
• 18,000 families use BestStart services annually.
• We have over 270 centres nationwide located from Whangarei to Invercargill.
• Each centre is managed by a Centre Manager who is supported by a local Area Manager. This gives our centre teams ongoing quality training and support.
• Te Whāriki, the world-wide acclaimed national early childhood education curriculum, is used in all centres.
• We have over 4500 permanent teachers nationally. Over 90% of our permanent teaching staff are either fully qualified with a diploma or bachelor of teaching (ECE) or higher, or are in training. These figures are very high by national standards within the ECE sector.
• We provide a two-year Advice and Guidance Programme for all recently certified teachers, providing further mentoring and training. This gives strong support for teachers from provisional registration to full teacher registration with the NZ Teachers Council.
• We regularly spend around $4 million on teacher training per annum.

We’re for children

At our heart is our commitment and passion for children. Central to this belief is our focus on the holistic development of children. We support children to explore the world around them, learning through relationships, creating a love of learning in an ever-changing world. Exploration, friendship and fun are part of the journey.

We’re for good

BestStart is a registered charity owned by the Wright Family Foundation. We support initiatives and programmes within BestStart and the wider early-childhood education sector (ECE) that support good outcomes for all children. We do this because we want to make a positive difference to the lives of all children.

Innovation leads us

At BestStart, innovation guides our thinking. We advocate positive change for learners through our research and practice. We’re proud to be thought leaders within ECE, openly challenging ourselves to think differently to provide the best for our children, families and staff.

We’re responsive

Our centres reflect their children, staff and communities. We celebrate individuality, uniqueness and diversity, encouraging a spirit of empathy, understanding and collaboration. Through our responsive relationships and our curriculum, we support learners to choose their own path.

Our people matter

At BestStart people come first. When we grow and develop our people, everyone benefits. We strive for whakamana/empowerment, nurturing a culture of excellence with engaged, talented professionals. Their commitment, skill and passion light our way.

A stimulating and loving learning environment for children aged 3 months to 5 years.We are happy to welcome you to Bumblebees Glen Innes and to our Community of Learning. We focus on the importance of our relationships with our children and their whānau. We create an ambiance of love, care and respect through getting to know our children and their families very well.

We aspire to develop a centre that is a home away from home. We are created by families for families and strive to always have open and trusting relationships with our children and whānau.

With trust, respect and love as our foundation, we can journey forth towards a lifelong love of learning. This learning will be based around the premise that there are no wrong answers and no mistakes, only discoveries to make and life lessons to be learned.

We understand that each child comes with their own set of circumstances and their own individual character. We endeavour to encourage your child’s curiosity and individuality in any form that takes. Be it cultural, physical, emotional or spiritual, we love to learn and grow with the Bumblebees children.

Kia ora and welcome to St Johns Kindergarten

At St Johns Kindergarten we aim to nurture children’s innate desires to explore and understand their world through play. Inspiring themselves and each other through their discoveries, imaginative thinking, wonderings and ideas about people, places and things.

We aim to build social skills and creative thinking through role modelling and through our rich environment which challenges children physically and which playfully provokes their inquiry thinking and problem-solving.

We aim to pay close attention to children’s interests and desires, believing that the children’s own goals are pivotal to their learning.

Our community values making strong links to the primary school curriculum’s key competencies with an emphasis on developing positive habits of mind for learning, oral language, and emergent numeracy and print literacy. We make these links through our support of children’s dramatic pretend play and in a play-based way through story-telling and by encouraging children to make things. The arts, science, technology and digital media are woven into our programme in playful hands-on ways, with the kindergarten being a maker space for discovery and collaboration.

Relationships are nurtured for children and whanau to experience a sense of belonging and well-being within the kindergarten. St Johns Kindergarten is noted for its strong whanau social network, and our parents are supportive of and involved in the kindergarten’s curriculum development.

Our learning philosophy

For the past 110 years, the Auckland Kindergarten Association has been igniting young minds by encouraging them to explore their imaginations through play. For many of us, kindergarten was where we began our life of learning; it was where we started learning skills like sharing, tolerance, patience, respect and self-confidence.

We view children as capable, competent, life-long learners, and our philosophy encourages children to make their own learning choices, problem-solve and observe and explore at their own pace…with support from teachers, parents, wider whānau and their peers. We value the importance of child-initiated, play-based experiences. Our kindergarten teachers nurture your children’s interests and natural curiosity by working alongside them, expanding language and introducing mathematical and science concepts, as well as literacy, digital technology and sustainable practices.

Our centres have gardens and natural outdoor spaces where children can create, explore, be imaginative and expressive. There’s plenty of room to safely run about, being imaginative and physically active. In fact, the natural world is essential to free-range play. AKA encourages each kindergarten community to explore and enrich their diversity and uniqueness. Some have regular excursions into the local community; some are Enviroschool kindergartens that live and breathe sustainable practices; while others engage in long-term research on child interest-based programmes of learning.

As an organisation, we formally acknowledge the dual heritage of Aotearoa / New Zealand, and work to uphold the spirit and intent of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in each kindergarten. We are accessible, secular and welcoming to the wide diversity of tamariki and whānau who attend our centres, and value ongoing partnerships between teaching teams and leadership staff with families and whānau. We value ongoing learning for teachers, parents and whānau, and the sharing of knowledge, skills and attributes is fundamental to achieving the best learning outcomes for children. Teachers and staff can access collegial professional time to ensure that quality practice is enhanced so current theories of learning and development within New Zealand’s world-class Te Whāriki early childhood curriculum are shared and understood.

Children learn

Children in our kindergartens have the opportunity to:

• Feel confident, develop responsibility and a sense of independence
• Play meaningfully alongside other children and adults
• Develop effective communication skills
• Persevere, problem-solve and take risks
• Explore limits, boundaries, routines and conflict resolution strategies
• Practice fine motor skills such as threading, writing, cutting and grasping
• Develop gross motor play such as physical games like climbing, throwing, kicking, balancing and lifting
• Develop creative expressions through painting, music, collage, movement, dance, finger-painting, drawing, cutting, pasting and story sharing
• Develop early numeracy, literacy and science skills
• Learn techniques through trial and error
• Explore the world through experimenting, questioning and curiosity
• Develop confidence and celebrate both attempts and successes
• Develop a passion for learning and a love of life
• Have fun!

Older children will be supported in their transition to school to make this process as simple and seamless as possible. Book a visit here on Kindello today, we’d love to meet you.