Our Centre

We are the longest running preschool in Ocean Grove…

We take great pride in ourselves, keeping up to date with new teaching theories and best practise to ensure your children receive the best we have to offer. A warm, friendly and inviting place to be for children and families to go, to allow what all children do best: PLAY.

What do we offer?

  1. An innovative PLAY based Curriculum
  2. A well equipped centre with current equipment, resources, technology and materials
  3. A bright, air conditioned playroom
  4. A fantastic outdoor undercover area, including a sandpit that is fully protected from the weather for all year round outside play
  5. Our spacious grounds offers shady retreats, large grassed area’s for ball games, races and running
  6. Great areas for climbing and adventurous play
  7. Safe off street parking
  8. Parent Involvement

Parent Involvement

Without parent involvement we cannot operate. Our committee is formed by volunteers from our families. Families help run the centre, supporting our program by helping on excursions, everyday help in the centre, administration, working bees, grants for equipment, gardening with the children, sharing ideas and skills, music, collecting materials for home corner, collage, art… the list goes on and on. We welcome family involvement, we need family involvement. It shows your children you are interested in what they do. It shows your children that they are important and value their education. It helps you to see and understand what your children do at preschool and how they interact with their peers and other adults. As a family affair it can also help brothers and sisters to get to know the centre and what a fun place it is to visit.

Being Environmentally Responsible

It is here that our centre has excelled, with support and nurturing from many of our families. Picture a child involved in gardening – planting a seed. There are so many concepts to explore, discover and learn. Children learn about science and nature when working in the garden. They will explore maths skills by counting scoops of dirt, and collecting warm eggs from the chicken coop. They will learn social skills by working with other children and adults. They will learn to care for and nurture living things. Through our environmental area not only does our garden grow but so do our children.

We have installed 10,000 litre water tanks that sustain our garden and animals as well as being connected to all of our toilets to conserve water.

Our Enviro area provides:

  1. A spacious area to grow many varieties of vegetables
  2. Fruit Trees
  3. Guinea pigs to care for and nurture
  4. Chickens who roam the area free range to move among the children, as they feed them, talk to them and collect those warm treasures from the nesting boxes
  5. Spaces to explore and trees to climb (under supervision)
  6. A worm farm to feed
  7. Compost
  8. A Great shed that houses our straw, animal feed and gardening equipment (and it smells like a farm)

The benefits that the children gain from this area are so many I could write a book, needless to say the children love to PLAY in this unique environment.

Nature Play

At Ocean Grove Preschool we embrace the outdoors. The children attending this kindergarten have daily exposure to a magnificent outdoor play space. As educators we believe that outdoor play is more than just an area for the children to run around and burn off steam, we believe that all aspects of an early childhood curriculum can be explored outside. An extended concept of outdoor play is Nature Play. Nature play encourages movement away from structured playgrounds and artificial resources and allows children to engage in meaningful ways with the natural world.

As part of our educational program the children participate in a fortnightly Nature Play excursion to the Ocean Grove Park. During this excursion children play in a designated area of bush. The duration of the excursion is 2-3 hours. Providing children with the opportunity to participate in unstructured play in a natural environment has overwhelming benefits in all areas of development; emotional, physical, social, language, cognitive and spiritual.

Play spaces in natural environments include plants, trees, edible gardens, sand, rocks, mud, water and other elements from nature. These spaces invite open-ended interactions, spontaneity,risk-taking, exploration, discovery and connection with nature (EYLF, pp15-16, 2009).

There is no such thing as bad weather only the wrong clothes.