Our Rooms

Our character filled 79 place centre is spilt into four homely, spacious rooms catering for children from 6 weeks- 5 years. Each environment is carefully thought out, with large natural outdoor spaces and a flexible indoor-outdoor flow.

Jingi Walla / 0-2 yrs

‘Welcome’ in Bundjalung

The Jingi Walla Room is the beginning of a family’s journey at our centre. We welcome you.

At this age, children are absorbing the wonder and complexity of the world around them. They are naturally curious explorers as they observe, listen, investigate and learn.

In the Jingi Walla room, we are committed to providing our youngest children with a safe, nurturing and stimulating environment for their holistic growth, development and sense of belonging, supported by our warm and caring educators. We believe this room paves the way for a beautiful journey through our centre.

We welcome each new child and family with respect and understanding and take our time to learn about your child through careful observation and through daily communication with families to understand their unique requirements and routines.

Throughout the year your child with explore their environment and participate in a range of experiences that challenge and support their development. Body awareness is promoted through sensory experiences, music, and movement. Opportunities to learn through trial and error are provided through obstacle courses, sorting of loose parts and construction play. Language development is encouraged through storytelling, songs, finger play and rhymes. Process focused creative experiences are offered using a wide variety of tools and medium, and are often hands on, tactile experiences allowing children to engage all of their senses to explore, learn and express themselves.

With age variations in this room, intentional and spontaneous teaching occurs, and our program reflects the various needs of children and enables us to provide age-appropriate experiences within our wonderful indoor and outdoor spaces. Children’s interests and emerging skills are considered and incorporated into our program and educators support children as they explore their environment, practise and consolidate these skills.

Our spaces are carefully thought out to allow children in the Jingi Walla Room to develop relationships, while also having cosy spaces to retreat to. We provide children with freedom to explore at their own pace, while ensuring we are a secure base for them as they reach significant developmental milestones in our care.

Jambay / 2-3 yrs

‘Hand’ in Bundjalung

Our guiding philosophy in this room is “take my hand, be my friend, let me help you”.

We endeavour to provide secure, responsive, nurturing and caring relationships with each child in the Jambay room. In our safe and stimulating learning environment, children are supported as they explore their developmental potential in ways that are meaningful to them.

As educators we encourage each child to gain a strong sense of identity and provide an integrated, emergent, multicultural and inclusive curriculum that promotes creative expression, pro-social skills, empathic understanding, autonomy and agency.

Our interdisciplinary learning experiences include music and movement, dramatic play, gross motor activities that increase children’s strength, flexibility and coordination, small and large group experiences that increase children’s ability to focus for longer periods, pre-literacy and numeracy which is incorporated in to all aspects of learning and STEM experiences.

We offer yoga, mindfulness and relaxation experiences which support children as they learn to self-regulate, explore self-awareness and enhance their overall learning and wellbeing.

We allow children to follow their interests, and provide intentional teaching experiences while acknowledging and respecting spontaneous learning opportunities on a daily basis.

Our room provides a welcoming and engaging aesthetic that encourages explorative and collaborative play where children feel they belong. We are sensitive to children’s individual needs and work with families to establish how best to nurture, educate and your children in our care.

Gariimaa / 3-4 yrs

‘Respect’ in Bundjalung

In the Gariimaa Room we are at the beginning of your child’s preschool journey. At this age your child’s rich imagination thrives and their love for play physical activity is evident. Their inner world is very powerful, and they begin to explore their place in the world with a growing assertiveness and sense of independence.

Navigating their way through their emotions and changing relationships can be challenging at times and therefore learning pro-social skills and how to work through big feelings is achieved through building resilience while giving children strategies to regulate their emotions.

We focus on self-help skills and supporting your child in becoming more responsible for their belongings. As educators we recognise all children develop at different rates and we endeavour to guide and support each child on their journey of growth and development.

Larger open spaces cater for your child’s increased physical activity with opportunities to run, jump, swing, climb, dance and ride a tricycle are provided. On-going learning projects take place based on children’s interests and this is supported through a diverse range of resources that both challenge and inspire learning.

At this age, children’s ability to talk in more complex sentences is emerging, and often the words cannot keep up with the ideas in their busy minds! We nurture this through pre-literacy experiences including movement and music, storytelling with props, encouraging name and number recognition when your child is ready, and providing a range of resources to promote fine motor skills that will support them with many developing skills as the year progresses.

We are a creative room where children are given the opportunity to express themselves freely. They can access a wide range of open-ended natural materials and are supported to follow their ideas through process focused experiences. We also use these creative experiences to build confidence and encourage children to try fun, new things.

We know that children learn best when they feel safe and happy, and our priority is to help each child feel like a valued and contributing part of our Gariimaa Room by meeting them where they are at and helping them build trusting relationships with their educators and peers.

Djimbelung / 4-5 yrs

‘Friends’ in Bundjalung

The preschool year is a valuable time for children to extend their established relationships and to build new friendships. Children are becoming more confident in their ability to negotiate, collaborate and resolve conflict.

Literacy and numeracy is embedded in to our daily program through stories, access to a variety of texts, songs, dramatic play, games, transitions and creative arts. These experiences provide children with foundational skills that prepare them for later learning and are provided through intentional and spontaneous approaches dependent on individual children’s current interests, prior knowledge, and abilities. Children are increasingly included in decision making about their learning experiences, room rules, documentation, activities, room design and routines.

Children at this age have increased agility and coordination and therefore more challenging experiences such as obstacle courses, rope climbing, skipping ropes and construction are provided. They are also able to participate in longer term projects, which helps to consolidate learning, in areas of interest.

At this age children are becoming more aware of their social responsibilities, and we promote children’s appreciation and respect for the environment through excursions to places that can enhance their learning. Destinations include Sea Bird Rescue Centre, Tweed Art Gallery, Circus Arts, local markets, and tours with our local Arakwal guides. We also enjoy visits from Bangalow Fire Brigade, Bangalow Police, Bangalow Koala’s and Braveheart and enjoy regular outings to our local parks and playgrounds.

We have visits to Bangalow Primary School and enjoy welcoming back children from the primary school who will be supporting our children with their transition to school. We value parent involvement in our room and welcome families to share stories, cooking and creative experiences, other languages, music or dance.

There are regular classes included in our program including a musician from the NRCAC, a yoga instructor, soccer coach and the Jurjum School Program designed to support children’s knowledge and understanding about our local Aboriginal history and culture.