Our Philosophy
Statement of Philosophy
Acknowledgement of Country
“We acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land on which we live and learn. We pay our respects to them for their care of the land over countless generations. We hope they will walk with us on our journey as we share friendship together.”
Nadia Wheatley & Ken Searle
“Going Bush”
Our Place
Belford Oaks is a 35 place community based children’s service, which was established in 1988. We are situated amongst oak trees, which is fundamental to our name and central to the local community.
We have a government funded Kindergarten program built into a long day care setting, catering for children aged from 6 months to 5 years of age.
Our service community is made up of a professional staff team of qualified early childhood educators many from various multicultural backgrounds.
Our Beliefs
The Educators at Belford Oaks believe children develop best in a safe, nurturing, healthy, respectful, caring and inclusive environment. We assist children in developing into responsible, confident, creative and active citizens of their world.
We are inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to children’s learning and we understand through this approach, that children use many different ways to express their thoughts and creativity. The Educators at Belford Oaks recognize the environment as the third teacher and therefore create beautiful and thoughtful play spaces. We understand it is our role as Educators to observe and listen to children, find out their interests and provide them with opportunities to explore these interests further.
Our Educators believe children learn best through hands on play, in an inquiry- based model of learning. We therefore provide a stimulating learning environment, one that promotes happiness and a desire to learn.
We believe children are independent and are autonomous in their decision-making. We believe they are expressive communicators and collaborative learners. We believe children are creative, capable and inquisitive, and have therefore created an open-ended learning environment that builds on these personal qualities.
The Educators at Belford Oaks believe open-ended play allows children to express themselves in play freely and creatively, not bound by preset limitations.
We believe the outdoor environment has more to offer than just physical benefits, extending on a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development. We therefore provide in indoor/outdoor program to nurture these developmental outcomes and to assist in nurturing a child’s creative intelligence, language, literacy and numeracy development through multi-sensory play experiences.
We believe home and family are the child’s primary educators and we foster collaborative partnerships for a holistic approach to learning and a high-quality meeting of needs.
The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF), the National Quality Standards (NQS) and a number of theoretical perspectives and contemporary research influence our programs.
Our Commitments
We embrace each child’s unique set of values, experiences and ideas. Furthermore, we recognize children develop holistically and have different styles of learning.
The Educators at Belford Oaks partake in ongoing professional development as well as in house mentoring to enhance their skills and knowledge consistent with change in the early childhood field.
We are committed to helping children understand the importance of looking after their natural world, and promote sustainable practices through encouraging a responsibility for their classroom, the outdoor spaces, and in turn, the world in which they live.
We acknowledge the diverse backgrounds of children and believe in instilling the powerful message of acceptance, regardless of gender, race, ability, social or family structure. Our early learning environment is reflective of this.
Goals and Aspirations for 2016
Exceeding all 7 quality areas
Building collaborative bonds with families and children
Re-establish our sustainability practices
Philosophy reviewed August 2015/ Next review August 2016