Welcome From The Director

If you visit our centre you too will find a dynamic place full of happy children who are not only learning pre-reading, pre- writing and cognitive skills, but are busy with a number of extracurricular activities such as Healthy Lifestyle Clinic, tennis, martial arts, music and art.  Not to mention a sense of fun.

We intentionally weave critical, future skills into our teaching programs- skills such as: problem–solving, critical and creative thinking; communication; collaboration and conflict resolution skills. We focus on creating an environment that stimulates happiness, security, self-worth and fulfilment. So our teaching focusses on collaboration and mutual support, on helping every child develop the desire to have a go, on the childrens’ well-being and most importantly, on seeing the value in every individual child.

Children are all individuals and they need to be fostered to discover and reach their full potential. To achieve this children need a loving, stimulating and non-threatening environment which nurtures and challenges each individual child. We believe children need a sense of belonging to enable each child a sense of identity and be confident and involved learners. We believe in Malaguzzi’s image of the child:

Supporting the whole child is also important at Riversdale Early Learning Centre. Looking after the social, emotional, spiritual and physical areas of each child are foundational to our practices and ensuring that the curriculum is child-centred and child–interested directed enables this support of the whole child.

Our talented educators work tremendously hard to create a dynamic curriculum that immerses children in their learning. They are supported with specialist teachers in the early childhood field that cater for their physical, emotional and learning needs.

Our educators focus on discovering what each child knows or the skills they already possess, through observation, family input and through discussions with the children. “Play” at Riversdale Early Learning Centre is the opportunity for children to work individually, small group projects or large group settings. We believe in facilitating children’s play and development and implement this by responding to children’s cues and ideas. Play provides opportunities for children to learn as they discover, create, improvise and imagine. We believe children’s immersion in their play illustrates how play enables them to simply enjoy being. We, as educators, will engage in sustained shared conversations with children to extend their thinking. We will endeavour to provide a balance between child led, child initiated band educator supported learning.

For our centre to ensure we continue to provide this amazing environment we must also focus on our education of our educators. We have three early childhood qualified teachers and an additional three studying their early childhood degree, 10 Diploma of Children’s Services educators and 9 additional educators (already with their Certificate 111 in Children’s Services) studying through our training company for their Diploma of Children’s Services. This ensures they are receiving the best quality training and that they are all training inclusively with our policies and procedures and centre ethos. We also have two trainees doing their Certificate 111 in Children’s Services with us as well.

We have a great long standing trend that we have a very little, almost minimal educator turn over. I invest quality training, time and education into each and every educator. Their job security, professional growth and development are very important to our quality existence and the security of the children in our care.

So, Welcome to Riversdale Early Learning Centre – a happy, secure and exceptional centre.

Kylie Alldridge

Kylie Alldridge
Director/ Owner