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"For Families, Friendship &
Fun"
Farm Friends is a unique purpose built
early childhood centre set on a 10 acre lifestyle block located in rural
Swanson/ Henderson Valley only 5 mins from Henderson.
We have been open since March 1997 as a fully licenced
early childhood centre, offering full day, sessional or 'school hours'
care and education for 2 to 5 year olds.
We are licenced for 30 children at any one time with a
quality teacher/child ratio 1:6.
 Farm Friends Early Childhood Centre provides a warm and
welcoming environment where our emphasis is on supporting 'Families',
building 'Friendships' with children, and creating a 'Fun' enthusiastic
programme whereby children enjoy attending the centre and experience
success in their learning.
The centre provides stimulating and professionally
presented learning environments where children have free access to a wide
variety of developmentally appropriate and good quality equipment and
resources, in well organised indoor and outdoor areas.
Our philosophy revolves around supporting families by providing a rich, social, family-like setting, offering flexible sessions that cater for the varied needs and aspirations of families today, and building a sense of community with long lasting relationships based on trust, respect, open communication, consultation and collaboration.
Children are well supported by a friendly, caring,
stable and experienced staffing team, in both self-initiated, planned and spontaneous activities. Teachers work alongside children and families as positive role models and facilitators, actively extending and scaffolding learning experiences. Children's language is enhanced through quality, interactive and responsive communication, in a relaxed and nurturing atmosphere.
We provide a 'transition to school' programme for our four year old children which aims to enhance a sense of community, belonging and contribution with our local schools, introducing school activities that build on early reading, writing, maths and science concepts and help ensure a smooth transition process for our children and their families from early childhood centre to school.
A unique feature of the Centre, is the country setting
which provides an environmental yard where children have frequent opportunities to observe wildlife and insects, experiment with gardening and harvesting their own fruit and vegetables, interact with natural materials and enables children to have supervised hands-on interaction with a
range of small pet animals in wide, open and natural surroundings. We believe that hand rearing and hands-on care of pet animals allows for the appreciation and care of living things. "Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as important to the child as it is to the caterpillar." |
