Nau mai haere mai Welcome to Mairtown Kindergarten
Mairtown Kindergarten is situated close to the town centre of Whangārei in Kensington. Our teaching team are proud to maintain and progress the long tradition of quality early childhood learning in this beautiful facility. We are strong advocates for supporting the relevance of play as the primary tool for learning, building strong relationships with our whānau and community and the importance of being immersed and engaged with nature.
Through play tamariki flourish, learning about descriptive language, social skills, creative thinking and problem solving, gaining strength and coordination and developing their knowledge of the world around them. In alignment with our centre philosophy, manaaki underpins everything we do at Mairtown, enabling our environment to be safe, nurturing and fun for both tamariki and their whānau. We believe in providing a natural and stimulating learning environment that fosters the self-belief of tamariki, encouraging them to have a positive ongoing attitude towards acquiring new knowledge.
We are an Enviroschools Kindergarten, which is guided by five principles, these are; Sustainable Communities, Maori Perspectives, Learning for Sustainability, Respect for Diversity of People and Culture & Empowered Students. The Enviroschools kaupapa guide our teaching, and we uphold Papatūānuku as an important kaiako; in nature herself the possibilities to learn and grow have no limits.
At Mairtown we provide many opportunities for tamariki to build a relationship with their natural world, an important aspect of this being our Nature Programme. We are proud to be enjoying our tenth successive year of spending time each week immersed in the heart of our turangawaewae, learning at the foot of our Maunga, Parihaka and on the banks of our Awa, Hatea, with our older tamariki.
Teachers at Mairtown are passionate about the care and education of all tamariki, providing high quality programmes and promoting strong community links. This begins with our lens of tamariki being capable, competent, and able to make decisions, and is reflected in the wide variety of daily experiences, resources and provocations which are intentionally offered. We positively encourage sensible / calculated risk taking, believing that overcoming risk or challenges builds lifelong learning skills in tamariki. We enable tamariki to develop ‘mastery’ skills through repetition, problem solving and peer tutoring, by not changing resources too frequently. Our environment is welcoming and homely, with a large grassed outdoor area providing ample opportunity for tamariki to explore, climb, be social or find a quiet space.
