Our Philosophy

At Gumnut Village Preschool, we understand how important the first 5 years of a child’s life is, we ensure that we are creating a nurturing and meaningful environment to ensure the children are learning and developing to the best of their abilities within the preschool environment. The educators also make meaningful, trusting relationships with all children in the service to help build their sense of belonging and wellbeing within Gumnut.

The educators at Gumnut are guided by the Early Years Learning Framework and National Quality Standard to ensure all parts of their program and practice are at a high standard, ensuring all children are able to engage with meaningful experiences and a service that helps them cognitively, socially and emotionally.

At Gumnut we also base our experiences on the developmental milestones and ensure the children are engaging in age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate experiences. The educators also reflect of Theorists to support their decisions and aid in the planning and curriculum, ensuring there is reason and intent behind everything they do, allowing the children to be in a service that is created for them and their learning abilities and interests.

We believe our Gumnuts should be given age-appropriate learning opportunities to help them learn and grow and build the skills they will use for the rest of their lives. We encourage the children to express themselves and support them in all their learning endeavours. This year we aim to create a more culturally responsive environment and with the inclusion of our newly created RAP, allows the educators to reflect on Indigenous practices and how to effectively implement them into our service.

We promote each and every child’s wellbeing through ensuring we have adequate staff through the service each day, as well as safe equipment and a clean environment as well as encouraging hygiene practices at all times through the service.

The educators organize many incursions throughout the year, helping the children learn about new things and engage in a range of different activities. With all the different people that enter the service the children are learning about the world around them and engaging in different experiences that help keep their learning environment engaging. As well as incursions, the educators theme each week based on events and traditions happening around the world and in the families of the service. We create activities and experiences based on worldly events to help teach the children about the world around them in a developmentally appropriate way.

The educators are constantly engaging in professional developments and online learning to help them learn more and build their knowledge about early childhood environments and the way children learn and development. Gumnut has also been working on being more sustainable within the service, with a sustainability officer to help guide the other educators into making sustainable choices and ways to help teach sustainable practices to the gumnuts. We believe our educators deserve a comfortable and safe environment to work in and give them many opportunities to include their voices, beliefs and values within the service, allowing them to feel a sense of belonging within the environment.

Our experienced team of educators are committed to engaging in professional learning and reflection to ensure an evolving curriculum that lays the foundation for the future learning of the children. Our play-based learning curriculum is responsive to the children’s needs and interests while developing their confidence, independence, and resilience. It acknowledges the uniqueness of each child while encouraging them to form friendships with children and educators.

The educators have allocated focus children every year that they create well-thought-out educational activities based on their learning capabilities and interests. These groups are split by age allowing educators to focus on a specific age group and use the developmental milestones to guide the creation of experiences and activities.

Our Leadership team keeps up to date with policies and procedures to ensure the service is embedding appropriate and current practices. Through the Quality Improvement Plan the educators reflect on their current practice and can make clear goals and work together within the service to embed appropriate practices that benefit the service and the children and families who engage in the service.