Bonnyrigg Public School Preschool Philosophy
Our Place
Bonnyrigg Public School is situated on the lands of the Darug People, whom are a part of our wider community. We pay respect to the elders past, present and emerging. We recognise their ongoing connections to the land and waterways.
At our preschool, we are culturally responsive in developing real connections within our local community and families. To acknowledge their unique cultural, spiritual, social and language context that contributes to a culturally safe preschool environment.
Our Beliefs
We believe in the growth mindset approach where children are encouraged to take initiative in their learning and become confident, capable, creative, and engaged learners. This means that children in our care are viewed as decision makers and active participants in their learning. Each child brings their own knowledge, strengths, abilities, culture, imagination, and interests.
Children learn best through play. ‘Play provides the most natural and meaningful means by which children can construct knowledge and understandings, practise skills, immerse themselves naturally in a broad range of literacy and numeracy and engage in productive and intrinsically motivated learning environments’ – Kathy Walker. This develops learners that can explore, investigate, experiment, communicate, build relationships, create, discover and problem solve.
Through providing children with a safe, nurturing, and positive environment that actively seeks out the voices, perspectives and views of children where mutual respect is always embraced. We further develop children’s knowledge and dispositions for learning so that all children develop a positive attitude towards lifelong learning.
Our learning environment supports play, through a child-centred program which provides children with agency. ‘Play involves the child actively engaged in an exploration which is purposeful and investigative. Play is the child’s mind, the child’s skill and the child’s learning not the teacher’s’ – Kathy Walker. Our program is open-ended, flexible, and educational where each day is planned as per the children’s daily needs.
With these connections we believe that children, families and the community will have a greater sense of ‘belonging’, while ‘being’ in the moment to ‘become’ confident and resilient members of the community.
Our educators use a range of different pedagogical practices to support children in becoming successful learners. Theorists that influence our teachings are Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory, Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory and Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. We believe that children learn best through their social relationships and our educators provide opportunities for collaborative learning and emphasise quality interactions with others. All children come into this world ready to learn and their interactions with the world will shape their ideas, understanding and development. Families are the children’s first and most influential teachers, but it takes a village to raise a child. We are committed to meaningful, regular engagement with families and the community and working in
collaboration with all the key stakeholders in a child’s life. This is achieved by building positive, respectful relationships with families based on respect, mutual trust, and open communication.
As educators, we take on many roles in play with children and use a range of strategies to support learning. We engage children in open-ended questioning to create positive attitudes towards learning. This extends children’s current ideas, knowledge, strengths, and interests through a responsive and hands-on approach. We provide a supportive and encouraging environment that is equally shared between child interests and educator supported learning. We foster positive interactions between children through modelling and the use of visual supports such as social stories and visual cue cards. This creates a fair and inclusive environment.
We advocate for the rights of each individual child to ensure they have equal access to an early education. We have strong community partnerships with external providers who are experts in their field. This ensures the children receive individualised and targeted intervention to support their transition to preschool and then to kindergarten. By being on the school grounds, we have a strong focus on school readiness from the beginning of the preschool year. We build children’s independence through empowering them to complete self-help skills. We value continuity in experiences to ensure a successful transition into kindergarten.
Our educators are passionate, competent, innovative Early Childhood professionals. We are committed to continuous improvement and work in collaboration with Bonnyrigg Public School to continue to improve practices. This is achieved by maintaining a whole school culture where we critically reflect on our practices and continue to learn and evolve our skills, whilst ensuring that we are meeting children, family, and community needs. Our educators work through cooperative efforts to create shared goals, respect each other’s work styles, and embrace diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Our team practices collaborative leadership where all educators are empowered to share responsibilities and to inspire change.
Updated August 2023.