Childcare options in Orakei

Kia ora and welcome to Orakei Kindergarten

Orakei Kindergarten has a newly constructed building and an extensive outdoor area. Within this environment, our professionally qualified teaching team encourages and inspires children to discover and experience the world around them.

Here at Orakei Kindergarten we value strong involvement from parents and whãnau, and work together to create a special place for children to play and learn.

You are welcome to visit us at Orakei Kindergarten!

The Orakei Kindergarten Philosophy:

At Orakei Kindergarten we create a safe, warm, welcoming environment where children and families feel a sense of belonging and inclusiveness. We sprinkle kindness by role-modelling love and care on a daily basis.

We respect our multi-cultural community and are committed to honoring Te Tiriti O Waitangi through shared Partnership, Protection and Participation.

At Orakei Kindergarten we are an Enviroschool. We grow sustainability by nurturing Kaitiakitanga/guardianship and the dance of giving and receiving with nature. We empower our children through building reciprocal and responsive relationships. We believe play is the engine to learn and by following the children’s strengths and interest’s our children will develop holistically. We believe that children given time and space to be themselves will naturally grow and flourish.

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.

Playday is a child-centred environment where the environment is carefully planned to engage, stimulate and extend the children’s learning and development in order to deliver equitable outcomes for all learners. We attune our teaching practice to each learners, strengths, interests, needs, identities, languages and culture.

At the heart of the Playday experience is building open,caring and responsive relationships. This enables our children to explore,experiment, grow and learn through play, investigating, growing, overcoming in order to develop resilience-whilst stretching their boundaries safely and having fun.

We are a mixed age centre that encourages strong family values through ‘tuakana-teina’ (young children learning from older children and older children taking care and responsibility for younger children) as they would naturally at home.   

We believe in creating an environment to foster a love of learning by enhancing freedom with responsibility, valuing creativity and appreciating individuality.

We endeavour to nurture the human spirit by respecting self, others and the environment through connection, communication and collaboration.

We educate for peace by embracing diversity, celebrating the joy of discovery and practising honesty and humility.

We support the child to make their own discoveries by directing the child’s natural energies towards purposeful engagement in an environment containing everything necessary for self-construction.

We uphold the Principals of Tiriti O Waitangi and strive to achieve meaningful bi-cultural practice.

We understand the importance of having a respectful, responsive and reciprocal relationship with parents/whānau because we educate the child as a cohesive team.