Our Centre – The Junction

Little Beginnings @ The Junction promotes the value of childhood at a time when children as capable learners and co-constructors continue their life journey. This is inclusive of respecting and embracing diversity and encouraging open collaboration and belonging for all participants.

At Little Beginnings @ The Junction we believe that school aged children are in a unique stage of life. We are committed to the care and individual interests of each child. We believe that we enable this by providing a safe, fun and friendly environment where school aged children can foster and maintain friendships and build on social connections with each other and their Educators. This is a time for children to discover who they are and how they fit into the world. Essential to this is the freedom to explore, experiment and self regulate in their own space where they feel protected, safe and secure.

Little Beginnings @ The Junction aims to provide school aged children with opportunities to thrive and wholly participate in opportunities to learn through involvement, guidance, relationships and resources, maximising every child’s potential. This will be achieved through an inclusive and respectful framework and open learning environments.

Little Beginnings @ The Junction aims for excellence in delivering a holistic program which encourages involvement and allows the children to explore and experiment in a safe and secure place. Underpinning this plan are our values as follows;

Child Goals

For children to:

• Feel safe secure and supported.
• Develop their emerging autonomy, independence, resilience and sense of agency.
• Develop knowledgeable and self identities.
• Learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.
• Develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation
• Children respond to diversity with respect
• Children become aware of fairness
• Children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment
• Children become strong in their emotional wellbeing.
• Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity.
• Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesizing, researching and investigating.
• Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another.
• Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, places, technologies and natural and processed materials.
• Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts.
• Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.
• Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work.
• Children use information and communication technologies to access information and, investigate ideas and represent thinking.

Staff Goals

For staff to:

• Develop warm respectful relationships with children, create safe and predictable environments and encourage children’s active engagement in the learning program
• Be respectful and ethical.
• Have professional standards to guide practice, interactions and relationships.
• Staff members work collaboratively and affirm, challenge, support and learn from each other to further develop their skills and to improve practice and relationships.
• Staff interactions will convey mutual respect, equity and recognition of each others strengths and skills.
• Maintain confidentiality with regards to issues and those concerned with the centre.
• Maintain loyal to the centre and those involved in the centre.

Parent/Community Goals

For the centre to:

• Focus on collaborative relationships with families that are fundamental to achieving quality outcomes for children and community partnerships that are based on active communication, consultation and collaboration.
• Build relationships and engage with the local community.
• Support families in their parenting role and their values and beliefs about child rearing are respected.
• Collaborate with other organizations and service providers to enhance children’s learning and wellbeing.
• Link with relevant community and support agencies are established and maintained.
• Respectful and supportive relationships with families are developed and maintained.
• Families are encouraged to be involved in the service and contribute to service decisions.
• Ensure the expertise of families is recognized and they share in decision making about their child’s learning and well being.
• Provide a service, which reflects and responds to the needs of the parents and the community.
• Accept and provide for the differing compositions of family units, being aware of and supportive to the stresses confronting families.

Environment Goals

For the Centre to provide:

• A stimulating challenging creative environment to promote and encourage learning and discovery.
• An environment, which is warm, comfortable, accepting and nurturing.
• A stimulating environment, which is safe, comfortable and spacious with a balance between hard and soft surfaces and free and contained space as to respect children’s need for social as well as private activity.
• An environment that is inclusive, promotes competence, independence exploration and learning.
• Take an active role in caring for its environment and contributes to a sustainable future.
• The environment is safe clean and well maintained.
• Design and equipment can be adapted to ensure access and participation by every child in the service and to allow flexible use, and interaction between indoor and outdoor space.
• The indoor and outdoor spaces are organized to engage every child in quality experiences in both built and natural environments.
• Children are supported to become environmentally responsible and show respect for the environment.

Program Goals

The Educators are focused, active and reflective in designing and delivering the program for each school aged child.

The My Time, Our Place Framework is embraced and implemented.

MY TIME, OUR PLACE Framework conveys high expectations for all children’s play and leisure activities in school age care settings.
In school age care settings educators collaborate with children to provide play and leisure opportunities that are meaningful to children and support their wellbeing, learning and development. School age care settings pay attention to the needs and interests of individual children within a context that promotes collaboration and active citizenship. Children in school age care settings have choice?and control over their learning as they collaborate with educators to extend their life skills and develop dispositions towards citizenship.

From before birth children are connected to? family, community, culture and place. Their earliest development and learning takes place through these relationships, particularly within families, who are children’s first and most influential educators.?As children participate in everyday life, they develop interests and construct their own identities and understandings of the world. As children transition?to school their social worlds expand to include a wider range of relationships particularly with children of a similar age. Children’s learning in school age care settings complements their learning at home and?at school. In school age care settings there is great importance placed on relationships and developing and strengthening children’s talents and interests. Children learn to know, to do, to be, to live together and to transform oneself and society.

Childhood is a time to be, to seek and make meaning of the world. During the school age years children develop their interests and explore possibilities. School age care settings give children time and place to collaborate with educators to organise activities and opportunities meaningful to them.

Children’s identities, knowledge, understandings, capacities, skills and relationships change during childhood. They are shaped by many different events and circumstances. It emphases learning to participate fully and actively in society.

All Educators at our Service are trained and experienced.

Due to our high standard and commitment of our Educators, we are able to provide developmental and educational curricula for each group of children.

Information regarding our Education Team is on display in the centre foyer.

We will use the relationships children have with their families and communities to build the curriculum, working in partnership with families, to ensure each child’s knowledge, ideas, culture, abilities and interests are the foundation of our programs.

Trish Temple

Little Beginnings Learning Centre @ The Junction Director

As an Educator I believe that children who are surrounded by an engaging environment will learn to explore and experiment. The learning process is based on a partnership between Families, Educational facilitators and the children. This solid foundation provides children with a smooth transition from home to school, which encumbers the wider community.

Tell us about yourself, your interests outside of work?

I am married and have three children; I have a Bachelor of Teaching Early Childhood Degree and a Postgrad in Counselling. My interests are photography, reading and travel.

What inspires you?

I am inspired by happy, positive people.

Tell us about the service you offer at Little Beginnings @ The Junction.

We have an Active After School Program that we run two afternoons a week. The Active After School Program focuses on getting children more active in movement, by using modified games that children find achievable and fun. We try to keep our program interesting and exciting for all the children who attend our Active After School Care Program.

Our main aim for the children at The Junction is to participate in the activities they wish to engage in as they have already been at school all day thus, less structure and more emphasis on free choice activities. With children being their own guides in a supervised environment.

What are the most important aspects of Education in the Out Of School Hours Care ?

To develop an educational program that fosters children’s development and wellbeing. Children’s voices, are vital in creating a program that enhances children’s interactions, activities, routines, planned and unplanned experiences.

Why do you think you meet the needs of the families in your community?

By appreciating that all families are unique and respecting their cultural background, values and beliefs.

Explain in one sentence what it is like to spend a day in the shoes of a Leader in the Out Of School Hours Care Profession?

It is challenging and rewarding to incorporate the children’s individual needs and interests, into one program and in the short time frame we have during before and after school care.

What’s the best thing a child has ever said to you?

I used to be a different person but I’m not any more.

At Little Beginnings @ The Junction Indoor and outdoor play based experiences are an integral part of our program. Play is essential to all children’s development as moments will arise when they discover something that interests them and these become ‘teachable moments’.