As A Centre We Believe
That the first 5 years of a child’s life is a precious part of their development and growth, where they should have the opportunities to investigate, discover, learn and explore the world around them. Children are shaped by all life experiences that they encounter in both the home environment and wider community. All children should be treated with equality, and their cultural and linguistic diversity embraced and acknowledged. Our centre acknowledges that each person who enters our service has something different and special to offer such as family values and traditions, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender and experiences.
Environment
At Angel’s childcare we believe in an environment that is secure, caring, loving, nurturing, anti-bias, equitable and inclusive. We strive to create a home like environment that is welcoming and warm to all families, educators and children, to assist children with the connections between the centre and their home environment.
Our Children
We believe children need to be valued as individuals, within the context of family and their community. By providing children with confidence and self-image through a range of experiences and opportunities we allow their understandings, skills, values and sensitivities to promote success. We encourage each child to reach their full potential by building respectful and meaningful relationships with all children. Each child’s unique skills are supported to ensure they feel secure, confident and included.
Positive encouragement and reinforcement are used as tools to direct and promote behaviors. Through positive encouragement and experiences we aim to build high self-esteem and self-worth. It is our aim to provide a loving, caring, nurturing environment that promotes each child’s learning and development, self-esteem and individuality, whilst having a day that’s lots of fun!
Collaborative Partnerships With Families And The Community
Angels Childcare acknowledges the ‘Darug people’ traditional owners of the land that Angel Childcare centres sit’s on, we value and respect the local Indigenous culture, past, present and future.
We believe the community enables children to develop a readiness for the transition to school, more importantly we view it as a readiness for life. We believe that our community is the children, their families, the educators and all the people within our larger community. Angels Childcare Educators have a shared responsibility for the development of each child and their families, collaborating with the community and professional organisations.
We aim to work in partnerships with the families in our service, valuing their culture and experiences that they bring to the centre. We aim to provide support and care for families in their parenting role, through open communication and collaboration. Families are encouraged to share their culture, language and home experiences with the centre. We support the time children and families take to
Develop relationships and co-construct knowledge, by offering opportunities to spend time with their
Children in the centre and the educators. We encourage families to use the centre as a resource for relevant service’s or enquires in regards to children’s development and needs. We encourage parents and families to contribute to our philosophy, policies and procedures.
Angels Childcare seeks and encourages the use of resource people, speakers and members of the community to visit and participate in our program to enhance children’s interests and learning. We aim to take children out on excursions within the local community to explore its past heritage and present experiences on offer, allowing them to develop a sense of belonging. We believe that a direct link between the community and the centre allows children to transfer knowledge from one source to another painting a much bigger picture of their world.
Our Educational Philosophy
Our educational philosophy is based around play being essentially ‘work’ for a child and that this is the best way that they learn about the world around them. As early childhood professionals we believe in providing a rich holistic play based program that adapts and allows children opportunities and experiences to develop their sense of belonging, being and becoming.
“Experiencing belonging – knowing where and with whom you belong – is integral to human existence.”
‘Being recognises the signify chance of the here and now in children’s lives. It is about the present and them knowing themselves, building and maintaining relationships with others, engaging with life’s joys and complexities, and meeting challenges in everyday life.”
“Becoming reflects this process of rapid and significant change that occurs in the early years as young children learn and grow. It emphasises learning to participate fully and actively in society” (Early Years Learning Framework, 2009)
Each day we provide children experiences that allow them to develop the skills to play, explore, imagine, experiment, enquire research, investigate and make their own decisions. We believe that children need opportunities to practice and consolidate their skills. These experiences enable children to develop lifelong skills of inter-relating, resilience, empowerment, social competence and independence. We believe these happen through collaboration and communication between children, Educators and families.