Our

PROGRAM

Olsen Avenue Community Children’s Centre has developed a new child-initiated program. Incorporating the latest version of the Early Years Learning Framework (version 2.0) with the Curiosity Approach that is developed on Loris Malaguzzi’s Reggio approach. Loris believes there should be a focus on awe and wonder where children experience, think and feel to make sense of their world. This approach allows the staff to offer a holistic ideology towards children’s development by supporting the child’s interests and family input.

The Curiosity Approach encourages Inquiry-based and collaborative learning environments that are essentially avenues that acknowledge and encourage children’s own thoughts, ideas, and voices. Through the use of real life, authentic resources, natural materials and loose parts, we inspire curiosity, wonder and awe. We believe that this promotes the children’s love for learning. All of our educators have a genuine love and passion for teaching and learning and are able to ignite curiosity and wonder within their pedagogical practice. Educators create environments that are open, warm, homely, interesting, and inspiring, which embrace our curious learners.

This is achieved by offering an extension on what a child takes an interest in on any given day. Furthermore, our staff strongly consider the input of families into their programming cycle that allows for extension on what information the family share and the interest level of the children from that input.

Photographs are taken to show evidence and are uploaded to our online program called Kindyhub. Via the Kindyhub app, parents have access to their child’s daily learning. The child’s daily adventures are shared to families via stories. As a centre we use this app to communicate and share important information. Parents can also communicate through this app to share family stories and photos of family adventures which allows us to extend upon their child’s interests, linking their family life with their day here at kindy with friends and educators.

At Olsen Avenue we believe in providing an inclusive environment that accommodates each individual child’s own social, emotional, intellectual and physical abilities. Their own interests, cultural beliefs and backgrounds are supported and respected and embedded into our daily practice and philosophy. Families are respected and valued as their child’s first teacher and are encouraged to support the program through family input. Families share their child’s milestones, interests and love for learning, which intertwines into our program. This creates a partnership between staff, parents and most importantly the children.

As part of our educational practices and pedagogy, we have a strong focus in embedding the cultures represented throughout the centre. We celebrate national celebrations from around the globe to ensure children feel a sense of belonging. The staff have learnt basic words in the local Kombumerri language that they use as part of their teaching to embed local Indigenous perspectives as well as doing a daily acknowledgement of country to show our respect to the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

At Olsen Avenue Community Children’s Centre, we believe in teaching the children sustainability practices. This includes the importance of our native wildlife, reusing materials and the responsible use of water.

To summarise, at Olsen Avenue, each child is able to make sense of their own world and build upon their individual self-esteem and confidence. By encouraging children to be involved in decision-making associated with different areas of life, enables them to identify as competent, responsible individuals, who take ownership for their actions and their environment. All children are respected. This ensures that their views, and opinions are heard and are treated as capable lifelong learners.