At the Blue Cottage, we believe in going the extra mile to help others. We believe that we are a community and that everyone is just as important as the next person. For us all to succeed, we need to have open and honest communication and to work together with trust, respect and with everyone’s best interests at heart.
For many of us, life is busy, complicated and stressful. Deciding where your child will attend childcare and entrusting someone else to help care for and educate your baby is a huge decision. At The Blue Cottage, we support you in this journey with an open door policy and a helpful, friendly team. We take away the stress by providing everything your child needs, so all you need to do in the morning is drop them off without having to check off a long list of jobs. It is important to know what your child is doing when you are away and that’s why we take more photos and do more stories in your child’s portfolio. This can be accessed through your secure online Storypark journal or read together in their printed journals.
Our team are highly respected for the amazing job that they do every day in the care, education and support they provide for your children, your family and each other. We have more teachers than the ministry recommends to ensure that they have the time to engage in meaningful learning opportunities with the children. The teams have a support person so the teachers have more time to write learning stories and share photos of your child’s day with you. We also operate flexible rosters so that those teachers who don’t want to work 5 days a week can have time off. This gives the teachers a better work/life balance which in turn means that they have more to give your children while they are at The Blue Cottage. We also invest in professional development for your teachers so they are also learning and evolving and are inspired and motivated to share their learning with your children.
Our purpose-built child care centre is licensed for 80 children and is split into 3 areas. We have spent a lot of time and care ensuring that the environment is warm, inviting and encompasses that homely feel. We are environmentally aware in everything we do and have used lots of upcycled furniture and resources with our touch of love added. Our outside area is always available to the children and we encourage natural exploration with all that nature has to offer. This can often get messy but results in amazing learning opportunities and luckily children are washable! As the Scandinavian saying goes ‘There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.’ Our outside area has very little structured apparatus and instead allows children to design, experiment and create their own equipment using natural curiosity and everyday items such as boxes, planks and tree stumps etc. Inside our childcare centre, we provide the children with a variety of learning rich resources which includes lots of loose parts so that children can engage in open ended play supported by their teachers and use their imagination as fuel rather than an instruction book.
It is no accident that the children are the last on this list. If children are in a preschool centre where families are supported, welcomed and stress free, where the teachers are valued, motivated and enjoy their work, where the environment is safe, cosy and rich in learning opportunities, then the children will feel secure, flourish and grow into active, interested learners who are constantly experimenting and exploring their world.
