Our Mission, Commitments & Philosophy

Our Mission

Our mission is to create stimulating, imaginative and developmentally appropriate learning environments for children in a friendly family orientated atmosphere.

Our educators are focused on working in partnership with families to meet the individual needs of each child in our care as we believe that building relationships with families is paramount to each child’s development and sense of belonging and security.

As part of our mission, we aim to build a team of experienced, energetic, friendly, and professional educating team members who are prepared to embrace the commitment of essentially becoming an extension of each family. Our team aim to deliver exceptional levels of professional care and education to support children not only to thrive within themselves and through their own personal achievements, but also socially within groups.

We nurture children and provide children with opportunities to promote each child’s social / emotional, physical, and cognitive development. We do this through intentional teaching, following children’s interests and family input all while being guided by the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) and the Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guide (QKLG).

We encourage children to have a love for learning and to be confident and involved learners, to work together in our centre and to be a part of local communities.

We strive to exceed the National Quality Standards in providing a safe and simulating environment for your child.

“With good foundations, Sky’s the limit”

Our Commitments

Our overarching commitments to our families and children in our care are to:

  • Work in collaboration with families by valuing the importance of their role and our relationships with children and their families. To continually work towards developing secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships to support children’s wellbeing, their sense of belonging and to provide a secure foundation to support children’s exploration and learning.

  • Provide a safe and secure environment with qualified educators to engage individually with each child to build their sense of belonging, confidence and love for learning.

  • To make all efforts to have Sky Tree be an extension to families and be considered

  • Create a ‘Sky Tree Family’ where all children, families and educators feel comfortable, confident and feel as though they belong and that their views and beliefs are valued. A place where all children, families and educators know each other so that Sky Tree becomes an extension of their family and their home.

  • Provide a range of learning experiences in a happy and safe environment that recognises each child’s individual skills, talents and interests. To provide thought-provoking activities, experiences and environments that engage children to develop their understanding of the world around them.

  • Collaborate with educators, families and children to provide more individualised quality care and education for each child. To develop learning programs based on both children’s interests and intentional teaching aspects in order to scaffold on children’s understandings and learning by making use of spontaneous and intentional teachable moments to extend on children’s learning.

  • Provide a range of open-ended resources and learning spaces to encourage exploration and to provide children with opportunities to make their own choices in relation to their exploration and learning.

  • To build upon each child’s current knowledge and strengths and to provide planning based on the aim to improve each child’s social, emotional, physical and language development.

  • To collaborate between educators and families to support children’s learning by Sky Tree valuing and incorporating family beliefs and input and by Sky Tree providing families with regular information on learning styles, the way children learn and by communicating with families on a daily basis in relation to their wellbeing of their child and child’s day.

To understand more about our beliefs and commitments, please read more on our centre’s philosophy below.

Our Philosophy

The creation of our philosophy has been a collaborative process between educators, families and children of Sky Tree. We have developed our philosophy after considering the numerous aspects of early childhood education and care and the desired outcomes families are wishing to achieve for their child.

Our Relationships with Children

We believe that secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships provide children with a crucial foundation for early exploration and learning. Positive relationships support children in learning about their responsibility to others, their connectedness to the people and world around them and supports a positive and healthy environment for children to explore and learn. Our small classes allow educators to build secure relationships with children in a positive all-inclusive environment, where children educators and families recognise that learning occurs in a social context and that interactions and conversations are of vital importance to children’s learning, promoting fairness and equality.

Children’s Sense of Wellbeing

We believe that a sense of wellbeing in children includes both physical and psychological aspects and is central to belonging, being and becoming. Being health, well rested and free of illness assists children to be able to participate happily and successfully in the environment. Our educators support children’s wellbeing by providing safe and secure environments, affirmations and respect for all aspects of their physical, emotional, social, cognitive. linguistic, creative and spiritual wellbeing.

Learning Environments

We pride ourselves in creating challenging indoor and outdoor learning environments to support all aspects of children’s learning and which spark conversations between child/ren, educators, families and the broader community. Our learning environments promote opportunities for sustainable shared thinking and collaborative learning. Our learning spaces invite open ended interactions, conversations, spontaneity, risk taking, exploration and discovery, all within an environment which has a very close connection with nature. Our environments are inclusive, promote competence, independence and learning through play. We provide learning spaces which allow children to engage in free play and which support spontaneity as well as provide learning spaces which allow children to focus on intentional teaching aspects but provide them with the freedom of exploration and discovery during those experiences.

Pedagogical Documentation

We enjoy and believe in working in collaboration with educators, families and children for the planning of our learning programs. We use children’s interests and the EYLF and QKLG learning outcomes to guide children’s learning, together with input from educators and families, to develop quarterly and weekly learning programs. We use the framework to guide our educators in their curriculum decision making as part of an ongoing cycle to assist in planning, implementation and in the assessment and evaluation of children’s learning and development. Educators intentionally scaffold children’s understanding and learning by making use of spontaneous and intentional teachable moments to extend on children’s learning. Educators also use reflective practices as a form of ongoing learning, which involves engaging with questions of philosophy, ethics and practices. Reflective practices conducted daily and weekly allow educators to analyse and make changes to the program and their practices as well as allow educators further opportunities to track children’s interests and their development.

Partnerships with families

We strongly believe that families are children’s first and most influential educators. Partnerships are based on the foundation of understanding each other’s expectations and attitudes and build on strength of each other’s knowledge. We trust each other by communicating freely and respectfully with each other to engage in shared decision making.

Community

We understand that community engagement is important as it can have an immense impact on children’s wellbeing and learning. Experiences of relationships and participation in the community, contribute to children’s ‘belonging, being and becoming’. Engaging with the community builds on children’s interests and expertise in being and becoming contributors to their world.

Inclusion & Cultural competence

We believe that supporting inclusion and being culturally competent is about building respectful relationships to support, promote and embrace difference. It occurs over time through our connection with others and through our daily experiences with children and families in our local communities. We can equip all children to live well with diversity and become active citizens now and into the future. It is through our commitment and our daily actions that we will truly value difference and become a community in which all can belong and flourish.

Sustainability

Young children represent future generations which makes it important for us as educators to help children realise the significance of caring for and protecting their environment. We incorporate and promote sustainable practices in everyday learning to support children and their families in developing a respect, care and appreciation for the natural environment.