What's Important To Us
Vision- To provide a high quality, holistic, nature and play based, supportive, and beautiful learning environment in which children, families, and educators work alongside each other to reach the best outcomes for every child and their lifelong learning.
What we uphold:
- Relationships
- Respect
- Risky Play
- Rose Way Programming
- Reconciliation
Relationships
- We believe in the importance of relationships.
- Building trusting, respectful, and caring relationships with each child, their family, and between the educators as a team, benefits our, and the wider community at The Discovery Garden.
- We value each child, family, and staff member, and celebrate our diversity and uniqueness.
- We advocate for equity, inclusion, and the rights of the child.
- Having strong, secure, and reciprocal relationships with children, families, and staff promote a strong sense of Belonging, and we endeavour to warmly connect with each person at our service.
Respect
- We believe in respect.
- Respect for each child, their voice, their beliefs, values, and capabilities.
- Respect for our families as they are of the utmost importance in every child’s life. And we recognise that they are each child’s guiding force.
- Respect for nature and the environment and teaching and engaging in sustainable practices.
- Respect for each other as educators, professionals, and team members.
- Respect for creating a beautiful, well resourced, learning environment for the children to feel safe and engage in. (Reggio Emelia approach)
Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.
Our Team
We have an incredible team of 40 dedicated, knowledgeable and courageous educators who deeply respect and are committed to their learners and profession. We see educators as the researchers of children’s play; thus documenting with professionalism, respect and importance becomes the framework for quality. The ensure a culture of continuous improvement by encouraging bravery, curiosity and innovation amongst teams and management. This team effort allows our practices to be an authentic reflection of our collective knowledge and values.
The Rose Way
Our programming, documentation, planning and reflection is based on “The ROSE Way” and the Early Years Leaning Framework. This is in direct response to and a combination of what we are seeing in children’s play, our communities needs, educator knowledge and current research. This approach to learning is inspired by the work out of The Reggio Emilia Project in Italy. It is underpinned by the belief that children are competent, skilled young citizens, thus it will provide a child-centred approach to learning that values, appreciates and celebrates each child’s uniqueness.
The ROSE way sees Educators as the Researchers of children’s play. We view children as capable and competent learners, and our role is to support each child to develop to their fullest potential. The ROSE way is not a recipe or activity-based planning rather a well-considered action-based research planning structure that will inspire quality. The ROSE way believes that when children are treated with respect and given opportunities to be involved in decision making about their daily experiences and learning, they are then confident in demonstrating their true competencies.
The Rose Way- https://www.therosewayplanning.com/
Early Years Learning Framework-http://acecqa.gov.au/national-quality-framework/
