Children’s Programs:

Why an Early Childhood Education Centre and not ‘day care’?  It’s not just about caring for your child.  That’s part of our role, but our role is much more than this.  It is with pleasure that our qualified Educators provide great opportunities to stimulate and extend your child’s development and learning by planning and implementing a play based, educational curriculum.  As more and more research is identifying the importance of the first five years of life in the development of a child’s brain, high quality early childhood education programs can significantly improve later life outcomes.

“Education means to draw forth, to bring out, not fill up and instruct”  (Joy Lubawy, 2006, p.9).  We believe children are active learners. That learning is more meaningful when children are actively involved in constructing their knowledge.  Therefore we provide an interest and play based curriculum where children actively engage in a range of meaningful experiences that extend their development and learning.

Here at Regand Park ECEC our developmental learning programs and curriculum are based on the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). The EYLF is a national curriculum framework governing the education of children during early childhood (0-5 years). This framework is intended to help children develop the skills to:

• Have the confidence to be themselves and make new friends (Learning Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity)
• Learn to respect cultural diversity and the environment (Learning Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world)
• Become strong socially, physically and emotionally (Learning Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing)
• Create, experiment, explore, imagine, investigate and problem solve (Learning Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners)
• Use literacy and numeracy to make meaning and express communication (Learning Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators)

To do this, we use a variety of programming techniques and a combination of routine and spontaneous activities to provide a varied and exciting program for your child.

Our interactions with your child are positive, based on your child’s strengths, interests and needs as well as your own expectations and goals for your child. Educators work in partnership with you to provide exciting and stimulating programs, encompassing the needs of ALL children, regardless of their background, culture, gender, race and ability level.

Educators complete group and individual observations to record your child’s progress. Informal feedback is available to you on a daily basis, with mid-year parent/teacher interviews offered to all families. You are also able to review your child’s progress records at anytime by accessing your child’s portfolio or making an appointment to see your child’s teachers.

Preschool at Regand Park ECEC:

Our Preschool rooms provide preschool programs between 8:30am and 4:30pm each day. Parents of preschoolers have the benefit of using our education service facilities before and after these times at no additional cost. Our preschool rooms provide an age appropriate school readiness program to help assist your preschooler in their transition to school. These programs are slightly more structured and include play based opportunities to engage in social, pre-writing, pre-reading and pre-mathematical experiences. We also have developed aims specific to this age group and will plan activities that will help your preschooler achieve these aims.

Attendance Sessions:

Here at Regand Park ECEC we offer positions in the following sessions:  

• 5 days – Monday to Friday
• 4 days – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
• 3 days – Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday OR Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
• 2 days – Monday and Tuesday OR Thursday and Friday
• 1 day – Wednesday only

Please Note:  If families decide to drop/swap days after enrolling, a child’s attendance must still fall into one of our sessions.  i.e. If attending 3 days and dropping to 2 days, the new attendance pattern would be either a Monday/Tuesday OR Thursday/Friday. If you are in receipt of the Child Care Subsidy (CCS), you will also be required to confirm the change in your my.gov.au account and sign a new care agreement . All sessions are 10.5 hours per day from 7:30am until 6:00pm.

Why Attendance Sessions?

“Healthy development depends on the quality and reliability of a young child’s relationships with the important people in his or her life, both within and outside the family” (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2009, p.1). 

Research shows that children benefit from consistent environments, relationships and interactions. Consistency provides repetition that strengthens connections in the brain. By having sessions here at Regand Park ECEC we are allowing children to create secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships with their educators and peers; have a sense of belonging to our service and be able to extend on their interests, skills and learning. 

Consistent Attendance Patterns in our Infants and Babies Classes:

Strong emotional ties between infants and significant people in their lives (attachment)  provide an important context for development.  Having strong emotional ties to a few people enables infants to feel secure and confident in their environment. These feelings of attachment allow children to feel secure, and confidence to explore their environment and interact with others, knowing a secure base is always close by.  Secure attachments are linked to a range of future competencies including emotional understanding and self-regulation, forming positive relationships in later years, a strong sense of self and positive social skills (Programming and Planning in Early Childhood settings, 2012, p81) 

Consistent Attendance Patterns in our Toddlers, Junior and Senior Preschool Classes: 

Regand Park ECEC has three sessions across the week:  Monday/Tuesday; Wednesday; and Thursday/Friday.  Having this consistency of children and Educators allows children to engage in a variety of research projects within our attendance Sessions. Based on children’s interests, these projects value relationships and participation as central to learning and recognises children as competent, capable, active and constructive beings (Theories into Practice, 2015, p29). In this way, Educators are able to record the process of children’s learning and changes in children’s knowledge and understanding as the research moves with their inquiry and allows them to gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter.  We find classes are a lot more focused on learning through inquiry and children demonstrate increased concentration, energy, creativity, persistence and satisfaction.