Kindergarten plays a significant role in the early years development of children, with research showing that early childhood education provides the cognitive, social, emotional and academic skills to prepare them for their primary school years and beyond. With the roll out of 3-year-old kindergarten in Victoria you may now be considering giving your child an earlier head start before school. In this blog, we explain the long-term benefits of a positive early childhood education experience at Niño ELA.

While no one day will ever be the same, there are common practices and routines undertaken each day. These practices form the backbone of our program, ensuring high quality early learning that supports your child’s learning and development and school readiness.

Depending on what time your child arrives at Niño ELA, they will enjoy a nutritious breakfast and a healthy morning tea to ensure optimum concentration and increased energy for a fun day of learning. Children can participate in play-based learning and development through activities such as physical activity, games as well as self-led play and exploration within the room.

To help prepare children for typical school hours and the routine, we combine structured and unstructured, play-based learning in our kindergarten curriculum. Teachers and Educators focus on creating a predictable, calm, settled and safe environment for children to learn.

What is unique about the Niño ELA curriculum?

POSITIVE EDUCATION

The main distinction between a traditional (sessional) kindergarten and Niño ELA is our dedication to Positive Education. Over the past six years, we have developed and implemented our Positive Education Framework, which remains an integral part of our Education Philosophy and teaching strategies.

Positive Education is a framework of teaching and learning based on the science of Positive psychology which is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, and that a certain set of skills can support this idea such as kindness, resilience, empathy, purpose and social connectiveness. It is based on providing a learning environment where every child is encouraged to flourish. We refer to flourishing as a combination of “feeling good and doing good”. It aims to focus on specific skills that help children strengthen their relationships, build positive emotions, enhance resilience, promote mindfulness, and encourage a healthy lifestyle. It is about navigating the difficult aspects of life as well as recognising and celebrating the wonderful things.

Positive Education builds a strong toolkit for creating a positive life. It aims to focus on specific skills that help children strengthen their relationships, build positive emotions, enhance resilience, promote mindfulness, and encourage a healthy lifestyle. Children learn in a developmentally appropriate way through strategies encouraging the early development of the core skills and attitudes for living a fulfilling life. It involves practical concepts that are easily embedded into an early learning environment and provides positive and proactive ideas that enhance the social and emotional development of the child.

THINK EQUAL PROGRAM

In supporting children’s social and emotional wellbeing, we proudly include the worldwide initiative Think Equal program within all our 4-year-old Kindergarten programs. Daily teaching is included within our curriculum to provide Kindergarten children opportunities to learn about social and emotional health and wellbeing, equality and global citizenship, further enhancing our positive education learning framework.

Project Work

At Niño ELA, project work is a central aspect of our curriculum, designed to foster deep engagement, critical thinking, and a sense of ownership in children’s learning. By allowing children to explore topics of interest in a collaborative and hands-on way, project work encourages curiosity and creativity. This approach empowers children to pose questions, investigate ideas, and seek solutions, all while developing essential skills such as problem-solving, communication, and collaboration. Through long-term, in-depth exploration of real-world topics, children gain a deeper understanding of the world around them, creating connections between their learning and everyday experiences.

Project work also promotes a high level of engagement, as children are motivated to explore topics that spark their natural curiosity. This type of learning allows for flexibility, where children can follow their interests, dig deeper into areas they are passionate about, and pursue their own lines of inquiry. Teachers act as guides, facilitating learning experiences and encouraging children to investigate, question, and express their ideas. By creating an environment where children’s interests drive the direction of their learning, Niño ELA fosters an active, inquiry-based approach that keeps children engaged and excited to learn.

How do we support each child’s learning and development, in preparation for making the transition from kindergarten to school?

Clarification of Terms

Readiness: the process involved in determining that a child processes the necessary maturity and development to begin school.

Preparation: once the decision of readiness has been made, preparation is the processes and strategies that are used to help a child practice skills and routines such as dressing themselves, eating their lunch, and some self-help skills before commencing school.

Transition: the range of strategies that schools use to initiate and familiarise children and parents with the school for the coming year. Transition strategies differ between school communities.

We take children’s interests into consideration as well as the character strengths of each child in planning a purposeful kindergarten program for each individual child. This helps each child to be an active agent in sourcing their own learning, building up their social and emotional, cognitive and confidence skills. Furthermore, we acknowledge and respond to each child’s contributions by ensuring their ideas and interests are reflected in our kindergarten program.

Niño ELA environments are designed to support children’s decision-making, providing children with a variety of resources to choose from, allowing them to make choices independently of adults. They can be open-ended, allow multiple uses, be used creatively, involve sustained, shared thinking, and include both manufactured and natural items.

The Niño ELA kindergarten program further supports each child’s learning, development, and preparation for school through promoting independence and self-help skills through the opportunity to participate in routine tasks like preparing meals, setting up environments and selecting resources.

At Niño ELA, our kindergarten program supports the following skills to guide and assist children to be school ready.

Social skills, to:

• Positively approach other children and make friends
• Participate in play
• Express emotions and deal with conflict appropriately
• Express their needs
• Share toys and take turns in games and activities

Cognitive skills, to:

• Show natural curiosity and interest in learning new things
• Have confidence in learning
• Be interested in solving problems

Language skills, to:

• Use language to ask questions and communicate their thoughts and ideas
• Listen to others
• Enjoy books and being read to

Independence and life skills support children to:

• Cope with a small amount of supervision in a variety of situations
• Toilet train and dress themselves independently

Physical skills, to:

• Use pencils, crayons, textas and scissors
• Balance, run, jump and use equipment such as balls and climbing equipment

What is the difference between sessional kindergarten and kindergarten in a long day care setting?

Niño ELA’s Kindergarten programs are taught by Bachelor trained and qualified teachers with a passion for early childhood education and includes a school readiness program to create meaningful learning experiences to encourage children to explore their interests, needs and love of learning.

The main difference between kindergarten in a long day care setting and sessional kindergarten are the hours offered, flexibility to learn at the child’s own pace and the allocation of days within the timetable. Sessional kindergartens traditionally offer several short sessions to the children over the course of their week and only operate during school terms. Whereas, long day care kindergarten programs operate for 52 weeks each year. Children who attend our services are offered a full day program, five days per week. Additionally, Niño ELA’s kindergarten program offers enhancement programs, incursions, excursions, and mealtimes in a long day care setting.

Whether you’re considering 3 or 4 year old kindergarten, the best start is an early learning centre that focuses on the whole child’s development and early childhood education, and at Niño Early Learning Adventures, our holistic approach to teaching does just that. To find out more, attend an upcoming information evening or contact a local Niño ELA centre today.