Guiding CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT

The early years are a significantly valuable time in a child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. In the first five years of life children’s experiences lead to the hard wiring of their brains and development of fundamental skills and understandings.

Young children are naturally curious to learn and have an innate desire to be active participants in their learning. The Early Learning Program at St Catherine’s offers our children a myriad of opportunities within the indoor and outdoor learning programs, and weekly specialist classes, to develop lifelong dispositions for learning. Children are given a range of experiences carefully planned and designed to develop and enhance their learning. The sounds and sights of children exploring, wondering, and making new discoveries are evident throughout Campbell House daily. Children use processes such as exploration, investigation, collaboration, and problem solving through all aspects of the Early Learning Program. Developing dispositions such as curiosity, persistence and creativity enables children to participate in, and gain from, learning.

Effective learners are also able to transfer what they have learned from one context to another. They also begin to learn where and how to resource their own learning.

Children develop understandings of themselves and their world through active, hands-on investigation. They need many opportunities to play, explore and discover using all of their senses. This is how they begin to make sense of their world. It also builds the children’s understanding of concepts and their creative thinking and inquiry processes. These are the foundations for lifelong learning.

Intrinsically linked with our Early Learning Program in Campbell House is our Wellbeing Program that supports our children’s development of a strong sense of self and belonging within our early learning community.

Educators at St Catherine’s Early Learning Centre work towards building warm, trusting relationships with our children and provide a predictable and safe learning environment. These conditions support the child to develop a strong sense of wellbeing. Children with a strong sense of wellbeing have the capacity to cope with day-to-day challenges. The readiness to persevere when faced with unfamiliar and challenging learning situations creates the opportunity for success and achievement.

Our ELC children are encouraged to take increasing responsibility for their self-help skills and basic routines. This promotes a sense of independence and confidence. As the children’s fine motor and gross motor skills develop, this provides them with the foundation for growing independence and the satisfaction of being able to do things for themselves.

Learning about healthy lifestyles, including nutrition, personal hygiene, physical fitness, emotions, and social relationships is integral to wellbeing. These opportunities for learning are embedded in our Early Learning Programs. A child’s physical wellbeing impacts their ability to concentrate, cooperate and learn. Good nutrition is also essential to healthy living and enables children to be active participants in their play and learning. We promote and encourage healthy food choices with the children. As educators, we acknowledge the importance of building a strong sense of wellbeing in children from a young age.

This supports the child to reach their learning potential and lays the foundation for them to live successful lives.

Our aim is for children to become confident and involved learners over time. This enables the children to become increasingly able to take responsibility for their own learning, personal regulation, and contribution to the social environment. As educators, we look forward to the children’s individual and group learning developing over the year. It is always wonderful to observe children making new discoveries and connecting with the world around them.

Ms Sarah Bethune Head of ELC

In Barbreck we continue to achieve high academic standards. Our most recent NAPLAN results demonstrate an exceptional level of achievement across all subjects, particularly in reading where our average score for Year 3 was well beyond the expected level across the nation.

Our academic programs in Barbreck are rigorous. Our classrooms are filled with curiosity, deep thinking, discerning inquiry, and relational discovery. However, our thinking culture is only one ingredient in our recipe for student success. In Barbreck, the emotional wellbeing of our students is considered of equal importance.