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Our environment
Our centre is filled with natural open spaces, vegetable gardens and fantastic outdoor opportunities, where our tamariki develop as confident, competent learners who communicate and express themselves as individuals. With a safe and nurturing environment for your child, we provide a place for children to learn, develop and grow through social interaction in an engaging environment, carefully set up by kaiako, with lots of opportunities to explore and learn.
Connecting with Nature
The natural world is a giant, open-ended learning laboratory. Children are innate scientists and love to experience the sights, scents, sounds, and textures of the outdoor environment. We are always looking for learning opportunities that embrace nature and we are so lucky that our semi-rural location allows us to embrace our beautiful and natural setting daily.
Through free play, children spontaneously connect with nature right here in our own playground and outdoor environment. For example, children are often busy building masterpieces with dirt or sand, searching for twigs and sticks, watching worms wriggling through the soil, gazing at clouds, jumping in puddles, or listening to the birds sing.
Our toddlers and pre-schoolers thrive on using their imagination as they become ‘explorers’ in their own environment, doing this means they are encouraged to investigate and learn the names of animals, insects, plants, and their purposes on our earth. We love seeing the children learn to care for their centre environment, their community, and the great big world we live in!
Dietitian Designed Menus
Our dedicated cook and centre team is currently striving towards the Tohu Manawa Ora | Healthy Heart Award from the Heart Foundation. From wholesome ingredients to balanced portions, every meal is thoughtfully crafted to support healthy development and foster good eating habits from an early age.
Teachers also do regular baking with the children, which provides them opportunities to engage and learn a range of food preparations skills and fine motor movements such as pouring, sifting, spooning. It is a great hands on sensory experience for children to develop independence through self-help skills, practice simple maths as they measure and count quantities.
Fruit Trees and Vegetable Gardens
Our centre has vegetable gardens and fruit trees. These gardens help tamariki learn through hands-on activities, encourage them to work together to plant and harvest, and teach them where food comes from. They also help children develop a love for nature and care for the environment.
Promoting Sustainability
We have partnered with City to Farm in their Zero Waste Zero Carbon in Schools Program to divert food scraps from landfills, instead providing local farms with compost for their banana palm plantations.
At Busy Bees Silverdale, we use a bokashi compost system where we place our food scraps in a bucket, and the children take turns sprinkling bokashi over them. The bokashi inoculant ferments the food scraps, pickling them to minimize odors and speed up their breakdown into topsoil. Bins are collected weekly and transported to a local Hibiscus Coast farm for use.
We also have chickens that eat food scraps, helping reduce waste while providing fresh eggs for the children to enjoy.
Our Rooms
Scouts (0-2 Years) our warm and inviting infants environment with caring teachers who love to nurture and educate infants, emphasizing effective communication with parents and incorporating their home routines into our centre, inspired by the RIE approach, where children are treated with respect, allowing them to grow and learn at their own pace, featuring a dedicated space for younger babies to learn to crawl and develop milestones safely, while also fostering independence as they progress to sitting at tables with their peers.
Flyers (2-3 Years) Children are given opportunities to explore, be challenged and develop confidence through enhancing their self-help skills. The toddler room works alongside our Preschool room and children have opportunities to engage and play alongside the older children specifically in our shared outdoor space, when necessary we are able to separate them into their age groups for mat times and meal times.
Explorers (3-4.5 Years) In our preschool, we encourage strong relationships between peers by having older children work alongside younger ones. Teachers support and observe learning while creating a challenging and curious environment. Children develop self-help skills, such as using the toilet, dressing themselves, and serving meals. We have regular mat times for songs, stories, and discussions among the children.
Travelers (4.5 – 6 Years) Our Travellers' group prepares children for school by building confidence and capabilities through activities like roll call, mat sitting, phonics, and projects. It focuses on listening, comprehension, following instructions, name recognition, and writing. Children join based on individual needs and interests, with approximately 2 terms before starting primary school.
School readiness programme
At Busy Bees Silverdale, our purposefully designed Transition to School Programme equips children with the essential knowledge and skills they need for this next step, allowing them to make a seamless and successful move to primary. All of which provide children with the best foundation for future learning.
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