Community Kids Empire Bay

Our Empire Bay child care centre is designed to be a home away from home that encourages every child’s exploration. Our resource-rich early learning environments have been carefully designed to immerse your child into a world of exploration, curiosity, and learning.  

Each learning space extends onto our beautiful outdoor environment with plenty of shaded areas, which encourages endless ways and opportunities for play! We have a stage for our children who like to perform, a large undercover sandpit, a mud kitchen, a worm farm, garden beds and watering cans for planting, growing and watering. We provide opportunities for children to engage in risky play, including riding on bikes with helmets along our sensory bike path, using the balancing beam, gross motor climbing equipment, hula hoops and bucket stilts.

We also provide access to books, drawing, a variety of balls, large dinosaurs and sea creatures for imaginative play. There is also opportunities for water play. We also have an outdoor bathroom for children. Playing in our outdoor environments is a great way for children to safely develop their strength, balance, and self-confidence through play.  

We have 4 dedicated indoor spaces. Our indoor environments invite exploration with quality resources and learning experiences. A small accessible library with brand new books and puzzles helps our educators focus on children's early literacy. Our preschool children have the opportunity to use iPads for their Ella language learning. To foster children's imagination, we have a home corner set-up and dress-ups for imaginative play.

The children participate in regular yoga and we have dedicated rest and quiet spaces for quiet times. Our nursery has two cot rooms, dedicated meals room, bottle warmer and own fridge for storage of teething rings and breast milk. We also provide a parent chair for families who wish to breastfeed.

Our team of passionate educators make up the heart of our Empire Bay child care centre. We know each child has unique talents and interests. Our experienced educators are passionate about helping every child succeed in discovering their identity and become confident, happy, and resilient learners. 

Our educators have designated rooms to ensure a sense of belonging and continuity of care for our children on a daily basis. They work hard to build relationships with each child and their families and communicate with families to get a good understanding of their goals for their child, and work together in partnership with families to ensure the children are getting the most of their time with us. Our educational leader helps ensure all educators have a great understanding of the Early Years Learning Framework and their obligations relating to observing, documenting and planning for children's learning.

We have a dedicated Work Health Safety officer and a Child Protection Champion to ensure that we are up to date with any changes occurring in these areas and ensure that we are meeting Health & Safety and Child Safety regulations at all times. We are a sun safe centre, regularly checking and recording UV levels and ensuring that our children "Slip, Slop, Slap" and seek shade when they are outside.

Play is essential to every child's learning and development. It enables children to make decisions, learn, take risks, and have fun. Our experienced team plan play-based learning activities in line with national standards. The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) is designed to engage in your child’s interests and allow them to experience each day in a new way, supporting their learning in the lead-up to primary school.  

Our Early Learning Curriculum also provides children with:

• Real Life experiences: We follow the children’s interests and support them to participate in fun and exciting experiences such as woodworking, planting, watering and harvesting the herb garden, caring for our worm farm and basic cooking skills including mixing, measuring and pouring.   
• Sustainability Program: Each age group participates in a sustainability project that help children embed sustainable practices into everyday life. Children learn about recycling, conserving water, growing food and the importance of looking after and protecting our planet.  
• Music and movement programs: Our music and movement programs have been designed to help develop fundamental movement skills such as balance and spatial awareness, important prosocial behaviours including working as a team, sharing and turn taking. Music, dancing, and yoga are regularly added to our program to help support children’s self-regulation, mindfulness, emotional resilience, memory, and concentration.  
• Language program: The centre uses the ELLA Language Learning Program for French, Spanish and Italian language lessons, and to teach the children about the foundations of foreign languages and different cultures.  
• Community engagement activities: We plan and encourage visits from local community including police, firefighters, and other community services in Empire Bay to help the children familiarise with their local community. We go out on local Nature Observation Walks and visit Empire Bay Primary School to assist our Kindergarten/ Preschool children with their transition to ‘big school’.  

We provide children with nutrious, fresh and seasonal whole foods created by our in-house cooks to please even the fussiest of eaters. For variety, our menus rotate every week and are regularly reviewed by nutritionists. All educators have their Food Handling qualifications to ensure the health and safety of all children. 

Our centre is nut free and allergy aware, and our cooks caters to the unique dietary requirements of every child.