Curriculum

Children’s Programs
Over the past 7 years, educators have been working closely with the early life foundation, and we have adapted the “Walker Learning Approach” to our planning and documentation. Children learn at their own rate, in their own time. This is supported by evidence from a range of perspectives including neuroscience, cultural and social environmental influences, child development theories and psychological perspectives. Wyndarra Children’s Centre respects the psychological, physical, and neurological developmental stages of the child and how these impacts on understanding thinking and language.

Wyndarra Children’s Centre has gone through the assessment and rating process; obtaining an overall Meeting rating. With Exceeding in quality areas 1 and 7. More information regarding the assessment and rating process can be found in the links below.
- Child Care Ratings
- Understanding the National Quality Standard for Early Childhood Education and Care Services
- OR download the Starting Blocks Fact Sheet here
Wyndarra Children’s Centre uses and embeds developmentally appropriate practice as the foundation of all work with children.
- Working towards developmental outcomes for children that are realistic and suited to individual ability.
- Provide a range of open-ended experiences that support each child to explore and investigate.
- Educators model socially appropriate behaviours, build upon children’s self-image, independence and confidence by encouraging positive approaches to learning.
- Educators participate in professional developmental to ensure they have up to date industry information to support children’s learning.
Community Connections are also an important part of our service. Educators network with other organisations to strengthen programs.

The Wyndham Maternal Health nurses make visits to children while in care for their development assessments. We have a yearly visit by a dentist who will provide dental check-ups and incursion for children. (Parent permission needs to be obtained for the visit.)

Teaching and Learning Through Play
Evidence comprehensively demonstrates that children in the early years make sense of their world, develop their social and emotional skills and strengthen their executive functioning skills through open-ended exploratory play experiences.

Wyndarra Children’s Centre reflects a play-based curriculum whereby educators provide a range of indoor and outdoor learning experiences. These are intentionally based upon the acquisition of skills, social interactions, language development, thinking and problem solving, motor control, literacy and numeracy, dramatic play, sensory experiences, construction, reading, and embed children’s interests and culture within them. Educators pro-actively plan for individual children to extend learning, skill and conceptual understandings through the learning experiences and children’s interests.

Our room programs and room allocations are based on the developmental stages of the child within that educational space.

Main Planning Documents
Individual Observation Planning Record (IOPR) is the most important document as it is used for the collection of information gathered on the individual child (focus child) regarding their learning. This is the document which is used as a reporting tool to communicate to families.

Please click below to see the overview.

Early Childhood Learning
If your child attends an early childhood education and care service (long day care, family day care, out of school hours care or kindergarten) in Victoria, your child’s educators will base their work on two complementary ‘frameworks’: The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework for all Children from Birth to Eight Years and the National Framework Belonging, Being and Becoming: birth to five years.

The Victorian framework is aligned with the National framework but has been developed for all early childhood professionals working with children from birth to eight years old. The framework assists early childhood professionals to consider how to work with you and your child, and what learning and development outcomes are important and appropriate for young children as they grow and mature.

These frameworks set high standards for how early childhood professionals work with you and your child.

The concepts in the frameworks influence your child’s whole learning experience (what early childhood professionals call ‘the curriculum’): how an early childhood professional speaks with you and your child and; the importance of play as a way for your child to learn.

The frameworks ask early childhood professionals to focus on five important areas of learning when they work with your child. These are called Learning and Development Outcomes:
• Children have a strong sense of identity.
• Children are connected with and contribute to their world.
• Children have a strong sense of wellbeing.
• Children are confident and involved learners.
• Children are effective communicators.

The five areas of ‘learning’ are broad, inclusive and interconnected. It recognises that early childhood is a time of belonging, being and becoming.

Children need to belong – to their family, their culture and their community. Without a strong sense of belonging, children cannot learn.

Children need time to experience being in the here and now – to play and to try new things. This is how your child learns to make meaning of their world – who they are, where they fit in with others, how to get along with others and how to meet challenges.

Early childhood is also a time of becoming – your baby or toddler has already formed an identity that will shape the adult they will become.

The frameworks are guides not lesson plans. Early childhood professionals will keep the five outcomes in mind as they talk to you about your child and plan learning opportunities that build on your child’s interests and abilities.

Early childhood professionals will also use the five outcomes as they listen to, watch and talk to your child in order to assess your child’s progress and plan for future learning.

A common way of talking about your child’s learning: Early childhood educators will keep in touch with you regularly to talk about your child’s progress against these five learning outcomes. They may use photos, share your child’s artwork and write up conversations they have with your child to show you what your child is making, drawing, saying and doing. This helps you appreciate what your child has learned and is learning. They will connect these to the Learning and Development Outcomes so that they can talk to you about what your child is learning.

(Source: Department of Education and Early Childhood Development)

Kindergarten Program
4-Year-old Kinder
The goal of the Kindergarten Program is to give the children the skills and resources they need to be ready and confident to start school the following year. This will be done in an engaging, exciting and hands on way, which promotes learning through play and focused learning experiences.

3-Year-old Kinder
Wyndarra’s Three-Year-Old Kindergarten Program offers children every possible opportunity to succeed in the early years, by providing 5 hours of play-based learning with our bachelor training kindergarten teacher.

Research consistently shows that two years of kindergarten are better than one — ensuring our kids are ready for school and set for life.

Early Start Kindergarten is available for families with refugee status, for children in out-of-homecare and for families who have ongoing or past connections with Child Protection or Family First Support. This entitles 3-year-old kinder children to 15 hours of free or reduced fees.

How
The children will be extending their knowledge of literacy, numeracy, social interactions and of the everyday world in a variety of ways. The focus is on meeting the needs of each individual child and ensuring that they are as confident and capable as they can be as an independent learner.

By working with you and the children we will together find out what interests they have. We will build on these interests by embedding them into the program with a focus on making them fun and exciting and linking them to literacy, numeracy and social activities. This will ensure the children are excited to learn and are engaged and developing their existing interests and skills.

The children will be involved in planning their own day through investigative play where they will be guided and extended by their teachers to think critically about what they are doing and want to do, through discussion and interactions with each other. The teachers will prompt the children to extend their play through questioning and having interactive inquiry discussion with the child.

The children will also, participate in short, focused learning activities where they will learn the routines and social skills that come with more formal learning, for example, sitting still during group learning time, hands up for questions and contributions to discussion, building up stamina for participation on these group learning episodes.

For more information, please download these Kindergarten Fact Sheets: All About Kindergarten and 3 Year Old Kinder Information for Parents.

Sustainability
Sustainable and environmentally friendly practices are an important and integral element of Wyndarra Children’s Centre.

Research reflects that children learn in the early years through modelling, through example and experience. The community of Wyndarra has a commitment to caring for the physical environment with an emphasis on natural and sustainable resources that reflect the local community and families of Wyndarra and to embedding this into everyday experiences with the children.

Associated practices include role modelling a sustainable environment:
- Worm farm
- Plants and herb garden
- Water tanks and water saving taps
- Families recycled donations
- Communication with families and children about how we support sustainability
- Using fewer resources where possible
- Recycling resources
- Recycling bins in all rooms

Children’s Programs

Teaching and Learning Through Play

Main Planning Documents

Early Childhood Learning

Kindergarten Program

Sustainability

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