Phone 07 3279 4448
OUR PHILOSOPHY
On behalf of all of our team here at Centenary Child Care & Early Education Centre, I would like to welcome you all to our Centre, and I hope you have an enjoyable time here with us. I would especially like to welcome the staff from other Child Care Centres here today and also especially our Centre’s children and their parents.
When constructing a building such as this, we often think of all the work that goes into the concrete slab, the walls, and the roof. We should also take account of the most important part of the whole building - the foundations - for without good foundations, the rest of the building will end up very unstable. It is the foundations which provide the stability and the long life of the building - particularly if the building is placed under any type of stress, such as cyclones, earthquakes, or floods. In short - we get a better building, when it is constructed on good foundations.
Similarly, with our education system. Early childhood education is the foundation on which our primary base, our secondary walls, and our tertiary roof is built. It must appear very obvious that we will get a better educational process, when it is built on good strong foundations, such as the programs offered by early childhood educational and developmental centres such as ours.
Primary education is often seen as promoting the three R’s . Secondary education continues the development in these areas, while Tertiary education branches out into career specialities. Early education however, establishes the foundations of our ‘life skills’ such as developing a positive attitude, teamwork, co-operation & working with others, constructive use of the Imagination, Perseverence & Determination, Pride in work, Communication, acceptance of Diversity and a multi-cultural society, recognising opportunities, setting goals, facing challenges, coping with change, and many more. I believe the world would be a very different place today, if all of these skills had been taught in an early education atmosphere as you see about you, when all of us were 3 & 4 years old. We’ve had to do it the hard way, but we can now have the opportunity to give a better start to our children.
In fact, over half of everything that we learn throughout our entire lifetime is learned in the first 5 years, and the ground-rules are set then for much of the remainder. It is critical that our teaching staff and our parents, as well as other sectors of the community, work together as a team to make these years as rewarding as possible for our children. Please always remember that education is a 24 hour per day process, and we all must contribute to the education process of our young people.
Our parents must have a great deal of pride, when they give their children the opportunity to benefit from the Early Education Programs as offered in a modern and high quality Centre such as ours, which all our team of teaching staff, under the guidance of our Directors, have put together.
There will always be the demand for high quality Childcare Centres which promote an active early education program, and I would like to thank our parents for their fantastic support, and also the parents of the children on our waiting list, for their patience. Certainly it will all be worthwhile.
We have had a lot of positive feedback, from many of our parents, over our educational program. Now with the opening of our Centre 2 extension, we will be able to offer this program to a greater number of children. Parents who want to give their children the best that Early Education has to offer, and the best possible start in life, now have the opportunity to do so. It is gratifying to know that one of our parents, who lives several suburbs away - drives 20 minutes each way - past 9 other centres - to give her children what she believes is the best Early Education program for her children.
In conclusion, several of us at the Centre have had the dream for some time, of bringing more than just another childcare centre to the Centenary Suburbs - we wanted to bring an Early Education Centre to the Centenary Suburbs. We’ve worked on the belief that ‘if you can dream it, then you can do it!!’ Our dream has now become reality.
Our aim is to give all our children the best possible start in life, and lead them into the 21st Century. As one of our parents recently said to us - ‘Our children of today, are the adults and leaders of tomorrow.’ No longer is one part-time year prior to beginning Primary School good enough. We must put everything we can into our children’s first 5 years of ‘foundation’ building, to ensure a stable and long lasting ‘structure’ of a citizen in the years to come. The pursuit of quality has no finish line.