Play Based Learning
Play is
Children’s
Work
Through play, children show us what they know and can do. Play supports all areas of children’s development, across physical, social, emotional, language and cognitive domains. Play supports positive dispositions for learning as children show curiosity, problem solve and persist in their learning. Play is the necessary foundation for children to experience success in their learning and develop skills and confidence for a successful transition to school.
In a play-based curriculum, different forms of play include:
- Adult-led learning: Educators plan for and introduce play experiences to purposefully direct children’s learning.
- Child-directed play and learning: Children lead their own learning through exploration, experimentation and imagination to purposefully direct their own learning.
- Guided play and learning: Educators involve themselves in children’s play to support and extend learning.
“Young children are naturally motivated to play.
Research shows that in children’s early years, play is the
best way for them to learn and grow”
Our Curriculum
The program for different age groups is guided by the national and state government approved learning frameworks for Birth-5 years and Kindergarten, and responsive to your child’s age, developmental capabilities and ways of learning. Click on the tabs for information about the program for different age groups.
Play is the best
way for children
to learn and grow.
Babies
(Birth – 12 MTHS)
Toddlers
(1-3 Years)
3-4 Year Olds
Kindergarten
Our Day
Nutrition
Babies
(Birth - 12 MTHS)
Babies (Birth-12 Months)
Babies’ learning and development is supported through everyday routines and early forms of play. Simple games, books, songs and rhymes promote language development and self-awareness. Through movement, babies develop fundamental movement patterns and physical skills. As sensory learners, babies engage actively with the world as they explore independently and socially with others.
Sensory-based resources and experiences feature in the Nursery room. The learning environment is designed to support different motor movement patterns with soft places to lay and roll, room to crawl and cruise, and elements to traverse and climb. Your baby will enjoy learning both indoors and outdoors as they engage with trusted educators.
Babies use trusted educators as their secure base as they explore the environment, learn through their senses, and develop new connections in the brain through play. Educators in Nursery rooms are emotionally available to babies to support a sense of security and belonging. Across the day, educators slow down in their work with babies, using everyday routines and play as opportunities to connect, educate, and care.
Toddlers
(1-3 Years)
Toddlers (1-3 years)
Toddlers’ learning and development is supported through engagement in everyday routines and active forms of play. Small-world and imaginative play promote language as Toddlers use their growing knowledge of the world around them to create narratives using varied resources. Construction play supports the manipulation of different materials, with arts-based learning promoting early mark making and creativity.
Toddlers are active, curious, and on the move as they play. Schemas or repeated patterns in play feature in Toddler rooms, with children transporting objects from one space to another, connecting objects in a line or circle, exploring trajectory, and enclosing objects or themselves in other objects or spaces. A well-designed learning environment for toddlers supports unhurried play, room to move, and common play schemas.
As increasingly independent learners, Toddlers explore the learning environment actively. Educators support collaborative forms of play as Toddlers begin to take interest in the play of others and develop skills to initiate and enter play scenarios. Educators involve Toddlers fully in predictable routines across the day, with mealtimes, toileting, rest times, and play providing opportunities to connect, educate, and care.
3-4 Year Olds
Pre-Kindergarten (3-4 years)
Increasingly complex forms of play support children’s learning and development in the Pre-Kindergarten room, as they engage in imaginative play, construction play, storytelling, and arts-based learning. Children engage with texts and other forms of print as they begin to explore symbols, and represent ideas through painting, drawing, and artmaking. Literacy and numeracy concepts are embedded across the learning environment and aligned with play themes.
The learning environment is responsive to children becoming more detailed-oriented in their play. Children aged 3-4 years use language in increasingly sophisticated ways to take on roles, collaborate with others, and express themselves through story, art, design, and imaginative play. Open-ended resources feature in play spaces, prompting children to collaborate and negotiate with peers how resources can be used in play. Outdoor play spaces with more challenging features invite children to learn the capabilities and limits of their own bodies through physical play.
Responsive educators support children to develop friendships, play collaboratively with peers, and understand and label their own and others’ emotions. In the Pre-Kindergarten room, educators facilitate rich learning experiences as children display increasingly complex forms of play. Educators support children to develop independence in self-care and engage fully in routines across the day as a valued members of the pre-kindergarten learning community.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten (4-5 years)
In the Kindergarten room, children learn through project work, inquiry learning, and rich art making. Across the year, children engage with literacy and numeracy concepts in the context of play, with university-qualified teachers supporting the development of pre-reading and pre-writing skills, along with early mathematical understanding. Within a play-based program, teachers foster children’s curiosity and confidence as individual learners, and collaborative learners in small and large groups.
The learning environment fosters children’s curiosity and immerses them in play-based and inquiry-based approaches to learning. Inquiry-based learning invites children to explore concepts over time and to problem-solve through creative and collaborative thinking. Multimodal learning features in the Kindergarten room to support the exploration of concepts across different play spaces in multiple modes using non-digital and digital tools and resources. As children navigate outdoor play spaces, they are supported to learn their own limits and boundaries in physical and risky forms of play.
In kindergarten, children are 4 for a whole year! Teachers celebrate who they are now, confident that the quality of the educational program affords children ongoing opportunities to develop foundational knowledge and skills necessary for formal schooling. Teachers foster children’s responsibility for self-care through routines and rituals that invite children to demonstrate independence and contribute as a valued member of the kindergarten learning community. As part of the kindergarten program, teachers prepare an end-of-year Transition Statement that outlines the distance travelled in your child’s learning in line with national and state-based learning outcomes.
School Readiness
Five Foundational Skill Sets
Physical skills
Fine and gross motor skills help prepare children’s bodies for the physical demands of a school day. For example, when handwriting, children need well-developed core strength to sit upright for long periods, tracking ability with their eyes to space and locate words on the page, shoulder strength and finger dexterity to manipulate a pencil, and the ability to cross the midline to coordinate controlled movement. Children also need well-developed physical skills for independent self-care, managing lunch box items, and engaging in physical activity and sports. In our kindergarten program, children have repeated opportunity to develop and refine fine and gross motor movement patterns through climbing, balancing, dancing, running, skipping, ball games, loose parts play, block building, Lego, puzzles, and art-making.
Social skills
Getting along with peers and adults, forming friendships, and working collaboratively all contribute to children’s positive experiences of being at school. As a group learning environment, kindergarten supports children to develop foundational social skills, with repeated opportunity to connect with peers and adults outside the home, develop strategies to enter play or invite others to play, collaborate, share resources, negotiate conflicts, and develop empathy for others’ perspectives and feelings. In our kindergarten program, children have repeated opportunity to work collaboratively with others through play, engagement in everyday routines, and extended project work.
Emotional skills
As they transition to school, children move toward self-regulation skills which are critical to being productive learners and maintaining friendships. Self-regulation is dependent on the quality of co-regulation a child experiences in the first five years. In our kindergarten program, Teachers model appropriate emotional responses and support children to develop a language to describe their feelings and responses to familiar and new situations. Co-regulation can only occur when children feel secure in their relationships with educators and experience predictable, responsive and supportive environments.
Oral language skills
Speaking and listening lead the way for reading and writing. In preparation for school, children need to use language to express themselves, ask questions and communicate with others. They also need to comprehend what is being said to them to take in curriculum content, follow instructions, and understand what others are communicating. Strong oral language and listening skills provide the basis for learning to read and write at school. In our kindergarten program, we focus on children’s oral language development – their ability to speak, listen, comprehend and hear the sounds of language. Children have repeated opportunity to engage in shared book reading, rhyming, singing, storytelling, dramatic play, and rich conversations with peers and adults.
Dispositions for learning
Learning requires children to be curious and attentive. In preparation for school, children need to see themselves as confident, involved learners who are curious to learn more. Play is the most important vehicle for young children to develop dispositions for learning because it enables them to use their imagination, and explore, discover and problem-solve. Resilience is fostered as children persist with practising familiar and new skills through play and explore multiple solutions to problems. Responsibility is fostered across the day as children take active roles in everyday routines, and care for each other and their environments.
Kindergarten Transition Statements
As part of the kindergarten program, teachers prepare an end-of-year Transition Statement.
The transition statement provides a snapshot of your child’s knowledge, skills and dispositions for learning across the five learning and development areas for the state-based learning guideline. Kindergarten teachers develop the statement from a strengths-based perspective and draw from information you have shared about your child, along with observations and formative and summative assessments of your child’s learning and development recorded across the year.
Transition Statements help families to:
- Understand their child’s learning and development progress
- Share information with their child’s school to support continuity of learning and transition to school.
For schools, transition statements help Prep teachers to:
- Understand each child’s learning and development progress
- Support each child’s successful transition to school.
Our Day
Nutrition
What matters in your child’s day…
The morning welcome matters for your child’s sense of belonging and wellbeing. As trusted relationships develop, your child will transition from home to the centre with increasing ease.
Play-based learning matters for your child’s learning and overall development as they engage actively with the world. Through play, children develop foundational skill sets necessary for learning and life.
Mealtimes matter for health, wellbeing and social interaction. Mealtime routines for babies are responsive to individual home routines. Over time, children learn to self serve and contribute to mealtime routines.
Everyday routines matter for predictability and children’s sense of security across the day. Children are actively involved in everyday routines as competent and involved learners. Educators use everyday routines to connect, educate and care.
Sleep and rest matter for children’s health, wellbeing and engagement in the daily program. Safe sleep practices are implemented for babies and toddlers, with older children supported to understand bodily cues for sleep and rest.
Home time matters for you and your child as you share in the experiences of your child’s day. Connecting with educators at the end of the day supports understanding about your child’s learning. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!
Nutrition
We’re all about healthy, nutritious eating
Your child can expect healthy and nutritious meals. We offer a rotating seasonal menu, providing breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and a late snack made fresh daily by our in-house chef. We are allergen-aware and cater to all dietary requirements.
Eating is a social event. Educators sit with children and talk about how food is prepared and fuels the body. Children participate in cooking experiences frequently as part of the daily program.
Our Commitment to Quality
The Rights and Best Interests of the Child are Paramount
In line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, First Five Early Learning is a Child Safe Organisation, with zero tolerance to all forms of child abuse and harm. The safety and wellbeing of children is our priority, and we expect all team members to uphold this commitment. As a Child Safe Organisation, we recognise that action and a culture of safety and wellbeing are necessary to ensure children’s safety and prevent harm. Civics and citizenship are underpinned by our view of children as active community members, who contribute to the social fabric of local and regional communities. From infancy, a rights-based approach to curriculum assures every child dignity and optimal development.
Children Are Successful, Competent and Capable Learners
At First Five Early Learning, our image of children as competent and capable learners drives our curriculum approach and the design of learning environments. We foster children’s natural propensity to learn through play and discovery and respond to children’s ideas, interests, play schemas and developmental capabilities. Contemporary early childhood education research and evidence-based practice informs high-quality approaches to teaching and learning which foster positive dispositions towards being a successful learner. We demonstrate respect for the multiple ways children represent their ideas and share their learning, and slow down in our work with children to hear their voices and respect their thinking.
Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Underpin the Framework
First Five Early Learning recognises that contemporary notions of inclusion encompass broad categories of diversity which take into account differences such as cultural, linguistic, spiritual and religious, gender and sexuality, physical and mobility. Diversity is recognised as a resource that enriches centre life, with all children being supported to access and participate fully in the daily program. To ensure equity, barriers to inclusion (environmental constrains, theoretical barriers, attitudes, and limited knowledge and skills) require re-thinking, with explicit training, support and action necessary to address limitations. At First Five Early Learning, we work in partnership with families, community, cultural leaders, inclusion support agencies, allied health professionals and organisations who uphold a rights-based approach to inclusion for all children and families.
Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures are Valued
The relationship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to the lands and territories now known as Australia is unique and enduring. First Five Early Learning commits to respecting and responding to the histories, cultures and languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Embedding practices occur at a curriculum, operational and community outreach level, ensuring culturally responsive pedagogy and practice, culturally secure operational, procedures, and respectful and reciprocal relationships with families and community. Ensuring team members develop a critical sense of self and understanding about their positioning in Australian society is central to all embedding practices to promote an anti-bias and anti-racist approach to service delivery, and integrity across embedding practices. Children are supported to engage in discussions and experiences which encompass learning around diversity, difference, race and representation to build their racial literacy. Representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are inclusive of rural, urban, regional, traditional and contemporary identities and ways of being. All children in Australia have a right and a responsibility to learn about and through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures, languages and pedagogies.
The Role of Parents and Families is Respected and Supported
Children arrive at First Five Early Learning centres with strong identities as members of families and communities. We recognise family and community as children’s first and most influential teachers and join with families to establish a secure foundation for children’s health and wellbeing and learning and development in the formative years. Partnerships with families can be complex, sometimes requiring a ‘third space’ in which to locate and respond to the values, beliefs and practices of caring and educating for young children from multiple perspectives. We view families and community as co-constructors of curriculum, with opportunities for learning, resources and centre environments reflecting children’s lived experiences. Within local communities across Australia, families represent diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. We recognise culture and language as a protective factor for young children; both of which provide purpose, resilience and pride.
Best Practice is Expected in the Provision of Education and Care Services
In First Five Early Learning centres, a commitment to continuous practice improvement is achieved through methodologies which invite critical reflection, including action research, communities of practice, and teacher-as-researcher projects. We recognise that best practice reflects the context in which a centre is located, with fundamental elements of high-quality education and care core to all centre programs. Continuous practice improvement belongs to every team member, with time, space and opportunities for ongoing professional learning regardless of role and tenure. Content and pedagogy knowledge is consistently reviewed in line with new research findings and evidence-based practice. In each First Five Early Learning context, definitions of best practice are developed in partnership with children, families and community.