Welcome to Dulwich Hill Preschool
Welcome to Dulwich Hill Early Learning Centre and Preschool.
We provide education and care to children aged from six months to school age, across four developmentally based learning environments.
Educators work in partnership with families to support their child’s transition from their home environment to the Service. By incorporating Attachment Theory and Circle of Security into their everyday practice, educators ensure that each child feels safe, nurtured and valued.
Our purpose built learning environments have been meticulously designed so that the interconnectedness of every environment fosters a natural progression through the early childhood period. This multi-tiered approach fosters children’s emerging independence, supports the mastery of new skills and knowledge, while also supporting children to take safe risks as they learn to navigate their world. Our outdoor learning environments immerse children in nature, where they learn to balance the integration of natural elements into their play while also learning how to care for and respect their world.
Our educational program is child-centred, stimulating and maximises opportunities to enhance and extend on each child’s development and learning. Children are viewed as capable and competent learners and educators use their knowledge of each child to guide the interactions, experiences, routines and events that each child engages in. This ensures that they are relevant to each child, respectful of their background and recognises and builds on each child’s current strengths, abilities and interests to maximise opportunities for their development and learning.
Children have the opportunity to engage in both structured and self-directed play experiences, supporting all developmental domains. Educators are responsive to each child’s individual needs, creating the optimal learning environment for every child’s journey through the crucial early childhood years and beyond.
We look forward to welcoming you to the Dulwich Hill Early Learning Centre and Preschool community.
Why choose Dulwich Hill ELC & Preschool?
Dulwich Hill ELC & Preschool provides exceptional high-quality Early Childhood Education for children aged 6 months to 6 years.
Every corner of the Early Learning Centre and Preschool has been designed to enhance preschool education and children’s wellbeing.
The Dulwich Hill ELC & Preschool Wellbeing Program incorporates, yoga, mindfulness and guided meditation to enhance children’s physical and emotional regulation.
Our specialist Arts and Music Program recognises the importance of early exposure to art and music for the child’s developing brain. Our program is carefully implemented to expose children to different mediums and deliberate use of the voice and use of instruments through specialist teachers.
Our outdoor play space is a nature-based garden filled with natural challenges giving children opportunities they otherwise cannot have in the Inner West of Sydney.
The research that underpins the curriculum implemented at Dulwich Hill ELC & Preschool ensures that our preschool children receive skills to put them in the best position for success in education and life.
- Highly qualified long standing staff team
- Unique nature based outdoor environment
- Strong research based School Readiness Program
- Emphasis on Wellbeing and Mindfulness
- Research based Arts and Music program
- High child to educator ratios to ensure personal attention for every child and every family
Our Philosophy
At Dulwich Hill ELC & Preschool we believe that the early years of a child’s life are the most influential.
It is in the first years of life that young children develop a sense of themselves and their place within the community of learners. It is within these years that a child develops the foundation skills and abilities that will carry them through life. Our role is crucial in fostering and facilitating the child’s development in these years.
To encourage each child’s curiosity and interest in the world around them and develop positive attitudes to learning:
- By promoting a thought provoking environment with powerful provocations that allow children to be curious, active learners.
- By observing children carefully and using children’s interests as well as their emerging skills and strengths to influence programming directions.
- By striking a balance between children’s interests and an educator’s awareness of what knowledge, skills and dispositions a child is ready to learn. As follows, investigations are mutually chosen by educators and children.
For each child to develop respect for themselves, others and the environment:
- By carefully and respectfully documenting children’s work as a way of valuing their ideas and learning, as well as showing children how closely we have listened and observed them throughout their investigation. Documenting a child’s learning provides them with a visible memory of what they said and did. Children recognise that their learning is interesting and worthy of time and attention. They learn to treat their own and other’s ideas seriously.
- By presenting aesthetic environments to children, we raise their awareness to order and care, therefore encouraging them to respect their indoor and outdoor spaces.
To promote acceptance of cultural diversity and appreciation of the many groups which make up the wider community:
- Providing a program and environment that reflects and embraces this.
- By recognising that early childhood settings provide an excellent environment for children to experience and enjoy the diverse miracle of Australian society and to respect and embrace difference.
To build and foster each child’s developing independence:
- By safely facilitating the natural drive in children to be independent through consistent and reasonable limits
- By actively planning for the development of each child’s emerging independence through consistent and effective observation.
To cater for learning and exploration in the following areas: science and discovery, literacy, numeracy, creative arts, geography and our world, manipulation, physically active play and sensorial exploration:
- By recognising that learning is an active process and children learn most easily through repeated exposure, consistent role-modelling and from repeated opportunities to apply and practice. Children learn by doing, not seeing or listening.
- By allowing children opportunities to actively engage with materials and resources in order for them to make their own meaning and become active learners.
To provide a happy and secure environment where children feel loved and respected and can develop to their fullest potential:
- By focusing upon understanding individual children in a special way with this focus being based upon carefully planned observation of, interaction with and documentation of each child and their experiences
- Educators also value and recognise that each child possesses feelings, experiences, attitudes and beliefs as valuable and complex as their own
- By recognising the importance of building and nurturing secure attachments with each individual child with the intention that they feel accepted, secure and free to explore different aspects of their world through their play and their relationships. When children feel safe, secure and supported they grow in confidence to explore and learn.
- By effectively enforcing rules and limits through fairness and consistency
My daughter went here for 5 years.This place is amazing. They really do care about the kids and you can see it. I could drop my daughter off every morning knowing that she is in good hands and well taken care of. Not to mention how much she has learned and how it has helped her when starting school. The educators are all so great, approachable, down to earth, honest, very knowledgeable and caring. They have really nice large rooms and outdoor areas with some great activities that my daughter loved. What i really like is that they really do focus on what the kids are interested in. They make learning fun! Parking is easy. Secure building. I am so glad I took her here. Wouldn’t go anywhere else. Would highly recommend this centre.
– Lucy B.
