BestStart St Albans

Our small, intimate Nursery is licensed for 16 children and offers large spaces for children to grow and develop within the environment. A home away from home, it has a large bay window that lets the sunshine in. The indoor space is quite a large space giving children a large space to explore. Large outdoor space with lots of climbing equipment to challenge their bodies. We use natural resources. nest space for our non-moving children to have 1 on 1 with Kaiako and a safe space to explore. A place where Tamariki build relationships and make new discoveries. We love messy and sensory play.

We follow whanau routines from home for their tamariki and use daily dairy communication books for our smallest children under 18months and memory books - for all their milestones .

To support transitioning from home to centre, we offer free settling visits for all new children. We believe that this helps them and you to get to know and become familiar with the teachers, other children, and the space before officially starting. During this time, teachers work with our families to get to know the child's routine at home.

The Preschool room is licensed for 34 children and within our Preschool we work to support our children's independence. Our large, natural backyard is home to our centre vegetable garden where we teach children about growing, harvesting, and cooking our own vegetables. Our challenging equipment allow children to develop upper body strength, and our sandpit and separate mud pit and water feature allows our children to get messy and just be kids.

We have mat time which can be songs, dancing, stories, learning about the classroom interest at 9am,11am & 1pm. Each month or so the classroom has a classroom interest they learn about this always comes from the children unless its events celebrated in the community. Teachers plan individual experiences to support children's learning goals.