Opening Hours: Monday - Friday, 7:30am - 5:30pm
The Earth Room is a space where your youngest children are loved and nurtured as if they were our own. The teachers are committed to forming strong, attuned relationships, and being a safe person for you to trust and your child to form an attachment to. We know that a child is more likely to develop a strong trusting bond with their teacher when their parent trusts us too. Therefore, we are committed to ensuring our connection with you is strong, genuine and one based on a mutual respect and understanding, meaning strong whaanaungatanga relationships are formed.
Life in the Earth Room is centered around your child’s unique needs and ways of being. Our Kaiako in the Earth Room teach from the heart. They aspire to create a ‘home away from home’ for you and your child. A place where children are encouraged to learn through experimenting and exploring to achieve their own goals, where their milestones are celebrated, and where they develop dispositions for life-long learning. The first 1000 days are the most important for a child’s brain development. We are committed to working in partnership with you as the parent and whanau to ensure that your aspirations for your child are our focus, and their first 1000 days are the best they can be.
Our maximum Teacher to child ratio in Earth Room is one teacher to four children but is usually one teacher to three children.
Learning in the Water Room (Ruma Wai) reflects the busy and fast-growing capabilities of this age group within a calm, unhurried learning environment.
Our experienced Kaiako aim to support the emotional needs of tamariki by developing trusting and respectful relationships with them. By providing flexible and creative learning experiences we will support your child to become an independent, confident learner. This includes developing life-long skills, such as turn taking, respect, empathy, negotiation and problem solving. We encourage and support independence in daily rituals such as toileting and Kai-time with mat-time also being an important moment where children are encouraged to be active and confident participants in group activities.
Through teachers actively responding to children’s interests and developing their unique learning dispositions, children gain confidence and competence in their abilities to explore, communicate and express their creativity. Our commitment to sustainability provides hands-on learning through nature as children assist in gardening, looking after animals, and building respect for our Mother earth/Papatuanuku.
Our Teacher to child ratio for Water Room in One teacher to six children.
The fire room (Ruma Ahi) offers high quality care and education for 3-5 Year olds. Our homely classroom and caring Kaiako provide tamariki with a real sense of belonging as they explore, build friendships and learn through play.
Our programme offers opportunities every day for tamariki to learn in nature and learn to respect and cherish Papatuanuku (our Earth). We value interactions with animals and opportunities to grow and harvest vegetables from our gardens, to share with our whanau and community, or to use in our weekly cooking and baking. We love to read books under the trees and share stories from home as we feel the grass between our toes and the wind in our hair, out in our big back yard.
Building strong, meaningful friendships is supported by our Kaiako through providing experiences and group activities that encourage mahi tahi (team work) and collaboration. Kaiako work with tamariki to develop relationships based on kindness and respect for one another.
We value our nature school programme, and spend time in our big back yard and local bush area, building strong connections with nature.
Our hope is to provide a learning environment that supports children to be confident in who they are, respectful to one another, and kaitiaki to our earth.
Our Teacher to Child ratio in Fire Room is One Teacher to eight children.