Our Program

We have taken a lot of time in creating a specifically designed program that works for what we want to achieve within our day care centre. Our program aligns with the Early Years Learning Framework, and is characterised by being, belonging and becoming. Our program is also designed to be put online, which is more sustainable and our families give us fantastic feedback on how our program online helps them feel like they are a part of our centre. Our Program operates from the minute we open till the time we close.

Little Munchkins Early Learning Centre is child focused, and we lead off of their interests. We scaffold on the day so that the children reach their potential as soon as possible. We record where the children are at in their development. We have incorporated many theorist into our program, some are more predominant then others. We pride ourselves in the program that we deliver, all educators within our service have contributed to perfecting our program. We are constantly improving our practices and quality of the documentation that we deliver, there still may be some tweaking in our program, these are from our reflections when we want to provide the best possible quality care to the children in our centre.

Our Philosophy

Community

We like to see our children being an active part of our community.  We want to ensure the community feels welcome within our centre.  We want our children to feel safe, secure, and confident within our community.  We want children to be familiar with what, as well as who, is in our local area, allowing all of us to build strong reciprocal links in our local community.  We see our community as another tool for learning and we use our community to extend current learning.  We recognise that not every child learns the same way so getting out into our community allows the children to be involved in real world experiences, and enables each child to learn and explore in different ways then children can when they are at the centre. 

Culture

We understand that culture looks different to everyone. Our centre's culture is formed by all of our families, children, educators, and community that are involved within our centre.  We want to embrace culture and let it be a distinctive and embedded feature of our centre. We will proudly incorporate our Australian Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander's knowledge, history and learnings throughout the centre.   We accept that everyone has different beliefs and values and we will strive to extend and grow on each of these to develop each child's individuality and belonging within the centre.  We will explore and delve into new cultures and take the children's lead on what and how they want to learn about different cultures. 

Families

We want families to see us as a part of their extended family, they are entrusting their child with us, and we will value that responsibility, and relationship.  We want to get to know each family and build a mutual, respectful partnership with them for the benefit of all children in our care.  We understand that when a collaborative relationship exists with families, that this is beneficial to everyone involved.  We recognise that families are the children's first and most influential teachers and that by using their input, suggestions, and prior knowledge we can provide the best quality care for each child.

Educators

Our educators will be dedicated to the learning and development of all the children within our centre.  To do this we have to ensure that they are given the right tools, our educators will have unlimited access to improvement strategies so that they can always improve themselves through various professional development.  Educators will strive to provide the best learning environment they can for the children.  Educators will be able to benefit from Mentoring sessions, to help them strive to be the best that they can be.  Educators will be given the tools and equipment to be able to run a high quality program within the centre.  Educator's will wear our uniform with pride and will represent the centre positively when in the uniform

Children

The children who attend our centre will be welcome at all times.  We want each child to feel safe, secure, comfortable and relaxed in our environment. We want our environment to be the child's third teacher, and for it to have that homely feel as you walk through our doors. We want to teach children to learn important lifelong skills that they can use throughout their next journeys in life. We encourage the children to become independent learners, who are able to do things for themselves.  We believe children learn best in a natural play based learning environment.  We will allow the children to take calculated risks so that they can excel in their self-exploration and confidence in tricky situations. All children will have the opportunity to grow and learn at their own pace, and therefor will have the autonomy and freedom to choose when, where, and with who they would like to explore with throughout the service. 

Sustainability

We want to actively encourage the children to be more sustainable by reconnecting our children and community members to nature to help reduce our carbon footprint.  Throughout our curriculum and discussions we will naturally include sustainable practices, including children's responsible use of energy and water.  When obtaining resources for the centre we want to ensure that we are thinking about sustainable practices, and that we recycle and upcycle as much as we safely can.  Educators will be mindful of the needs of the environment when they are providing experiences, and will only use what is necessary, excess resources will be used again in a sustainable way.

Management

We pride ourselves on being able to provide a small family owned and operated service.  We want to provide the best possible environment for children to learn and thrive in,  including delivering a curriculum full of various resources and excursions that allow for the children's development to naturally occur in.  We want our families to feel supported and respected, by working alongside them and walking this journey together.  We want to continually strive for improvement of our policies and procedures, and of the practices implemented daily throughout the centre.  We aim to implement a positive organisational culture through ensuring our educators are highly trained and passionate.  We want educators to feel supported by providing various professional development opportunities for them to continually develop their knowledge and practices.

Curriculum

We pride ourselves on our curriculum that has been purposely developed for our centre, and is guided by the Early Years Learning Framework.  We use the indoor outdoor learning approach that allows each child the autonomy and freedom to develop their own learning within different spaces, with peers, and educators of their choosing.  We are strong believers that the children learn best when they are allowed to play, and extend on their own current interests and allows for opportunities to create their own learning journey.  Observing each child through these play experiences allows us to accurately document each child's learning and development using methods that's are useful and meaningful and allows us to extend on each individual child's learning using intentional teaching methods.  We believe all children should be supported to learn new things, which in turns allows them to develop real world learning and plants the seed for their futures.  We believe children should be exposed to nature play and natural learning that allows for children to be challenged and develop curiosity around new and difficult tasks.