Childcare options in Whenuapai

Welcome to New Shoots Whenuapai – a bespoke space where you’ll find children giggling and dancing as they climb through tunnels, hunt for dinosaurs and watch sandpit volcanoes erupt.

Famous for its prestigious award-winning building, our architecturally designed centre draws its inspiration from the sea. The building itself is shaped like a whale, and the sea creature theme is mirrored throughout with room names like Pipi and Moana. 

Within our walls, beautifully interactive spaces are tailored to each age group, inspiring tamariki’s imagination, stimulating their curiosity and supporting their growth. Our whimsical rooms are infused with shapes and colours, cosy couches and natural resources for endless hours of fun.

We embrace tuakana-teina, reflected in our shared outdoor environment bringing older and younger children together to explore and learn from one another. Given freedom to run and climb, dig and splash, they become the masters of their own journey towards becoming confident, resilient young people.

Community is woven into our daily lives and we value the relationships we have built with the local school and our air force whānau. From hosting parents’ nights, to cultural celebrations and an open door policy, we view our early childhood centre as a point of connection within the community.

Pop in today and visit your child’s home away from home in the heart of Whenuapai.

• Fees include nappies, meals, wetbag, bag and hat/beanie (season dependant)
• Catering for our Airforce community
• Quality ratios and small group sizes
• 2019 Silver New Zealand Master Builders Commercial Awards: Education Project Award
• 2019 Silver Designer Institute of New Zealand Best Design Award

Welcome to Whenuapai Kindergarten, where we are committed to providing a safe, loving and fun environment for your child to learn and grow. We value a connection to nature and boast a natural outdoor space that encourages active movement and exploration.

We assist your child to develop their independence while having a strong focus on developing social competencies. We encourage a culture of ‘kindness’ where we speak and show kindness to others as well as focus on looking after our natural world through sustainable practices.

Being uniquely located next to Whenuapai Primary School provides us with opportunities to visit the school and we provide a strong transition to school programme.

We welcome you to pop in and visit us any time.  We would love the opportunity to meet you and your little one, to show you around and to answer any questions you may have.

We are an experienced team who are passionate about developing children’s independence, resilience and supporting them to become capable and confident lifelong learners and communicators. Our team currently consists of four fully registered teachers, a part time administrator, and an unqualified teacher aide and teaching assistant.

We are all passionate about teaching, and have a variety of interests. You can read our individual teacher profiles displayed at Whenuapai Kindergarten beside the office door.

We believe that a trusting, friendly and happy working environment also means that children are happy and content. Whenuapai also has a very involved and friendly parent support group who welcome all new families.

We look forward to meeting you and your family.

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.

Remarkable Kids strongly believe that the early years are the most important for growing and learning.

Our teachers are dedicated to forming nurturing relationships with our children, while building respectful relationships with family/whānau that are based on open communication and trust. Every child and member of their whānau are welcomed, treated with respect, given equitable access to learning opportunities and have their culture, identity and language recognised and valued. We work in close partnership with parents and whānau as we strongly believe we are on a collaborative journey together to care for, and educate your child(ren). 

We have an open door policy so that all families feel welcomed at any time, and can communicate with our teachers to ensure children excel and develop to their fullest potential.  We are committed to the unique bicultural heritage of Aotearoa, New Zealand and our founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi and we use this to guide our bicultural practice. Te Reo and Tikanga Māori is respected and woven throughout our daily rituals and learning experiences. We appreciate, treasure and celebrate different values and traditions within our diverse community. 

Remarkable Kids also strives to inspire children to become life-long learners who will contribute actively and positively to the global community and wider society. All of this helps build the foundations for outstanding citizens of the next generation.