About Us
Caring for Children
Who We Are
At Blue Gum Early Learning & Child Care Centre, we pride ourselves on being a community based, non-profit organisation. What does this mean for the families that attend our early learning service?
Being a community based centre, we are able to focus on providing the best service possible. Proceeds are retained in our Centre for resources, equipment, staff development and building upgrades. We are able to attract and retain high quality educators, provide high quality learning and play facilities, and not focus on returning a profit to investors.
At Blue Gum Early Learning & Child Care Centre, we pride ourselves on the quality and experience of our early childhood personnel and will ensure that the children feel secure and happy in their environment. We cater to the needs and individual interests of all children while facilitating optimum development in all developmental domains : physical, cognitive, language, social, emotional, and creative expression.
We cater for five age groups with five learning rooms and three separate outdoor areas catering for the needs of each specific age group.
We encourage children to value, respect and embrace each others differences while acknowledging similarities, taking on roles and developing respectful relationships with others through play.
We employ additional qualified staff, which is above the regulatory requirements, to ensure and maintain a high standard of care and consistency of service.
Our Philosophy
At Blue Gum Early Learning and Childcare Centre we take enormous pride in the high level of experience and education of our Management Team, Early Childhood Educators, Food Coordinator and Bookkeeper. Long term continuity of educators and staff are at the forefront for all that we do.
We believe in forming strong bonds with our families and colleagues so that we can help support each other in nurturing and educating all of our children. Our ultimate priority at Blue Gum will always be in the best interests and welfare of each child, and we continually strive to have strong reciprocal relationships with our children, families and colleagues.
Each child’s uniqueness is upheld and educator’s honour their time spent with each child. This provides an environment in which children feel safe and secure so they can grow in confidence from the relationships built between families and educators.
It is pivotal that we offer children choices throughout the day so that they can have control over themselves and their environment. Educators will always be kind and empathetic to a child’s feelings and developmental needs.
We respectfully value parents as the child’s first teacher, we are an inclusive service who endeavours to embrace and celebrate all the diversity of our families’ structure, culture, ethnicity and religion. Educators promote competency in each child’s home language as well as in Standard Australian English.
We believe that children have a right to good physical health and happiness and that good nutrition, physical activity and rest are essential to a balanced sense of well-being.
Our educators implement and encourage family input and children’s interests, incorporating this into the learning environment to continue to foster their wellbeing. Furthermore, this enables each child to be celebrated as an individual allowing them to develop a strong sense of self.
We see the environment as the third teacher and through this we scaffold the children to become independent and develop a love of learning. Educators support an active learning environment encouraging children to be confident involved learners through active, hands on investigation.
Whenever possible we will provide as much “free flow” experiences between our rooms and outdoor areas. This creates opportunity for older children scaffolding the younger children’s learning.
As a Community Based Service, we identify ourselves as being cohesive contributors to our immediate and wider community.
