About Imagine Early Learning & Childcare Merewether Heights
About Us
Our Childcare centre has state-of-the-art facilities and provides childcare and education for children aged six weeks to five years. The operating hours are 7am – 6pm weekdays.
The service has two distinct wings, each with specifically-designed features to provide nurturing care and education for children in each age group. There is a central courtyard with large verandahs adjacent to each wing. This setup allows flexibility in combining indoor and outdoor play opportunities regardless of weather conditions.
Imagine Childcare Merewether Heights is committed to providing excellence in care and education for young children. Our educational team is highly skilled and qualified to create meaningful programs for the children including designing aesthetic play spaces for them to freely explore. Educators are transparent in communication, sharing with you ideas, knowledge, and resources relevant to your child. They maintain quality relationships with children and families to ensure that children are supported in achieving positive outcomes during their time at Imagine Early Learning.
The natural playground and surroundings guide our philosophy and practice. Situated in a natural bushland setting, children enjoy a range of learning areas both outdoors and indoors. Outdoors, children explore our up- and downstairs playgrounds, which are set up according to the children’s interests as observed by educators. The nature garden is an inviting area for the children to learn from and interact with natural environment. Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating through play in the nature garden.
Sustainability is a core value of our philosophy, where educators encourage children and families to be sustainable in their everyday practices. Sustainable practices that encourage awareness and impact of human activity on the environment are embedded throughout the service. These practices are evident through play in the nature garden. Children are encouraged to use our rain water tank to water our garden. The garden is made up of native plants, succulents and trees, which the children have learnt to respect and use appropriately. We have a worm farm where the children are encouraged to put their compostable food scraps. We later use this waste to enrich the soil throughout the gardens of the centre.
The children have learnt to care for Buddy the Guinea Pig. Each week, a different room within the centre cares for Buddy: feeding him, washing him and cleaning his cage out.
Indoor play spaces are awash with natural light and ventilation. The nursery and toddler rooms provide spaces for active exploring and learning as well as cosy nooks to curl up next to a carer to read a book. The preschool rooms are set up to enrich children’s learning across all areas using carefully planned spaces that encourage collaboration, problem solving, creativity and imagination. At Imagine Early Learning & Childcare we make learning fun!
WHAT WE PROVIDE
- Morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea
- State of the art facilities
- The natural environment allows children to engage with nature. We have mud kitchens, dry creek, rocks, vegetable and herb gardens, trees, shrubs, sand, water, digging patch, pet rabbit, composting bins, a labyrinth, recycling bins and much more
- Calm and tranquil cot-rooms for babies
- Temperature controlled premises
- Security access through Pin-Code entry
- Qualified and Experienced staff
- Play-based educational programs facilitate learning and development
- Innovative transition to school programs (pre-kinder programs) delivered by university-qualified Early Childhood Teachers and Diploma qualified Educators
- A Primary caregiver approach for Nursery and Toddler aged children
- OWNA: CCSS approved software provider. OWNA is an effective Parent Communication app that gives you real-time access to children’s data, view Images/Videos and more, a great Feedback tool, up-to-date Event Calendar and loads more.
We place a strong emphasis on nurturing children’s innate curiosity and sense of wonder. We aim to “show them all the beauty they possess inside and to give them a sense of pride” (Whitney Houston). Watch this video to get a snapshot of our philosophy in action.