Gold Coast Queensland

The Little Souls Early Childhood program prides itself on individually catering to each of our children based on our observations and frequent, open communication with parents. As a family style centre input from parents and families about their child’s interests, strengths and weaknesses enables our team of educators to create a dynamic and exciting educational environment. With the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) as a foundation our program is designed to use a wide variety of resources to engage our pupils in many areas of development.

 

 

What Your Child's Day Looks Like

 

Throughout the day children participate in a wide range of activities and experiences that extend upon their knowledge and provide opportunities for each child to develop their curiosity and love for learning. The children have the opportunity to mix with a variety of different age groups and the day is structured to support the emerging interests of each child with the opportunity for child led play and experiences.

 

Intensively Planned Sessions (10am – 2pm)

Between 10am and 2pm each day the children participate in our intensively planned sessions. These sessions are more structured than the rest of the day and incorporate a higher level of intentional teaching aimed at targeting particular skills and developmental areas. These sessions include:
 

• Circle Time – Teacher led, where children have the opportunity to participate in group learning
   

• Lunch Time – Children sit together in family style table groups while they eat a healthy lunch. A strong focus is placed upon self-help skills.
   

• Planned activities focusing on children’s areas of need/goals and structured activities to practice social skills and play through
   

       - Cooperation activities
 

       - Turn taking games
 

       - Group games
 

       - Outdoor play
 

       - Literacy/Numeracy/Science/Art activities

 

How We Plan, Program and Document 

 

Our programs are based on the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). We plan and evaluate from the three elements within the Framework – Principles, Practices and Learning Outcomes. Using these elements we create programs that suit each individual child’s learning style and provide them with the guidance and nurturing they need to actively participate and grow to be confident learners. Our programs evolve through the observation of children, discovering their interests and individual needs. These observations are then reviewed and reflected in the planning process.

 

Planning

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Short Term: Short term our educators contribute to the planning process by noting down any observations of the children and implementing spontaneous activities daily based on the direction the children are taking their play and interactions.

 

Medium Term: Fortnightly formal planning is completed where teacher led experiences are planned for the upcoming fortnight. Observations of the children and critical reflections of experiences from the previous fortnight are used to plan for the next.

 

Long Term: We have an annual calendar of planned experiences that corresponds with occasions throughout the year such as special events and celebrations. We incorporate planned incursions into our long term planning to enhance children’s learning.

 

Documenting

Children’s learning throughout the day will be documented through daily program journals and individual and group observations/learning stories. Families can access the program journals and observations any time through the online family lounge. Educators take photographs of the children during the day and the photos are displayed in the front office on the TV screen so parents can view them during drop off and pick up times.

How We Prepare Your Child For School 

 

We believe that children need a comprehensive and consistent program in place to equip them with the social and emotional skills that best prepare them for their transition to school. We embed school readiness activities and routines throughout our entire program. This ensures that your child is exposed to key learning opportunities to help them with the school transition throughout the whole day.

 

We aim to prepare children to be socially, emotionally and academically ready to go off to school. Social skills are a huge part of a child’s transition to school. Here at Little Souls educators put a strong focus on building each individual child’s social skills. Both structured and spontaneous peer interactions give children the opportunity throughout the day to learn and practice turn taking, sharing, learning in a group and build confidence by helping each other.

 

Children become emotionally ready for school through being exposed to a routine each day. They learn to cope with structure and expectations from their educators. As a routine is in place that the children are familiar with, opportunities to cope with change occur and our educators are able to help children understand and accept that change can occur throughout their day. Focus is placed on self-help skills in all areas including but not limited to toileting, hygiene, lunch, packing away and everyday life skills (hand washing, putting shoes/hat/sunscreen on, packing and unpacking bags, etc.)

 

Our structured intentional teaching based activities help your child to be developmentally and academically ready for their transition to school. Children are exposed to activities that are based around numeracy and literacy, music, art, physical health, fine motor, social/emotional understanding, science and creativity. Our aim is to support and guide your child to ensure that when they move on from Little Souls and enter the big world of school they are keen and confident learners who feel at ease in their new environment.

 

Our Educators

 

Here at Little Souls we have a strong team of educators who understand the value and importance each day has on your child’s learning and development. Our qualified and experienced educators provide learning opportunities and experiences based on all children’s strengths, abilities, needs and interests. Our educators all participate in a comprehensive training program as part of the early intervention component of our centre. They complete training modules on a variety of different areas such as behaviour management, social inclusion, devloping relationships with children and many more. Our centre has cameras throughout to enable our comprehensive training program to be paired with video and performance evaluations. Have a look at Our Team section to meet some of the educators your child will see each day. 

 

Family Input

 

As a homely and family style centre we aim to provide many opportunities for family input and participation. We seek and value family feedback, ideas and involvement. We respect that you have your own individual hopes and goals for your child and endeavour to consider that in the implementation of our program. Families are able to follow their child’s day through our parent login where learning stories and daily program journals can be viewed. We strongly encourage and promote verbal interaction between ourselves and the families in our program. Many opportunities are provided for families to join their child in the classroom through organised events such as Mother’s/Father’s day afternoon tea, open days, Grandparent’s day, Easter celebrations, Christmas celebrations and families coming to share skills, hobbies and talents with the children.