About
Our Team
Our qualified educators work with experienced support staff to deliver high quality programmes.
The qualifications of our educators are within the regulatory requirements, which are Diploma, Certificate 3 and Advance Diploma of Children’s Services, Graduate Diploma of Teaching of Early Childhood. Many of our educators are bilingual and love sharing their heritage through language, dance and cultural festivities, including Armenian, German, Greek, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin and Farsi.
All educators and staff are trained and hold a Level 2 First Aid, Anaphylaxis, and Asthma training as well a current Working with Children Check and National Police Check.
The Director
The Director is responsible for the overall management of the centre, including the day to day running of the centre. The Director’s role is to ensure there is a safe and healthy environment for the children, educators and families and to guide and strive continuous improvement with the best outcome for all stakeholders at the centre.
The Committee of Management
As CKCC is a community run education and care service, it is governed by a Committee of Management comprised of parents of children at the centre. The Committee of Management is responsible for the overall governance of the centre and operates under a constitution. The Committee makes decisions about policy, employs early childhood educators, plans and manages the finances, and ensure that the centre complies with council, State and Federal regulatory frameworks. These decisions are made in collaboration with the Director.
Parents are encouraged to join the Committee of Management. It is a great opportunity to meet other parents, get to know the educators and to be involved in an active and enthusiastic community. The Centre's AGM is held in October, and is when reports from the executive and subcommittee are given, retiring members are acknowledged and new committee members are elected. If you are interested in joining the committee you can talk to the Director or a Committee member, or come to the next committee meeting. All parents are welcome at committee meetings, which usually meets at 7.00pm on the third Tuesday of each month.
Food and Nutrition
At CKCC, meals are carefully planned to make sure your child is offered a nutritious, varied, and balanced diet at the centre. Morning tea, a hot lunch and afternoon tea are provided. Milk and water are provided as drinks. The weekly menu is displayed outside the kitchen-serving window as this allows you to see what your child will be eating for the day. This helps parents not to repeat the same foods for dinner.
The centre employs two part time cooks who plan, purchase all the food supplies and work closely with the centre director to ensure all Food Safety Standards are consistently maintained.
Mealtimes and the preparation of foods are seen as valuable social and learning experiences and are consequently treated with importance at CKCC. Our cooks plan menus based on children's nutritional needs.
Each quarterly newsletter a favourite recipe of the children’s is included and at times cooking is also included into the children’s programs. The cooks are recognised as a member of the CKCC’s educator team and in collaboration with others.
We are an allergy-friendly centre. As allergies can potentially become life-threatening (anaphylaxis), we ask parents not to allow any outside food onto the premises.
Child Safety
In regards to the child safety environment Camberwell Kindergarten and Child Care Centre has a moral and legal responsibility to ensure the health and safety of all children at the service, and will provide training, resources, information and guidance to support this.
Camberwell Kindergarten and Child Care Centre is committed to:
- Ensuring that the health, safety and wellbeing of children at the service is protected at all times while also promoting their learning and development
- Fulfilling its duty of care and legal obligations to protect children from any reasonable, foreseeable risk of injury or harm
- Ensuring that people caring for children at the service act in the best interests of the child and take all reasonable steps to ensure the child’s safety and wellbeing at all times
- Supporting the rights of all children to feel safe, and be safe, at all times
- Developing and maintaining a culture in which children feel valued, respected and cared for
- Encouraging active participation from parents/guardians and families at the service, and ensuring that best practice is based on a partnership approach and shared responsibility for children’s health, safety, wellbeing and development
- Promoting children’s development and wellbeing
- Promoting the cultural safety of indigenous children
- Promoting the cultural safety of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
- Promoting the safety of children with a disability
- Fosters opportunities for each child to participate, express their views and to learn to develop
- Always acts in the best interests of each child and has zero tolerance of child abuse
- Actively manages the risks of abuse or harm to each child, including fulfilling our duty of care and legal obligations to protect children and prevent any reasonable, foreseeable risk of injury or harm
- Continuously improves the way our service identifies risks of and responds to child abuse and encourages reporting and improved responses to allegations of abuse.
Storypark – Using technology to build relationships
Relationships with children and families are the fundamentals of quality early learning and great outcomes for children. But while both educators and parents can try their best to communicate and share experiences, life often gets in the way and learning opportunities can be missed.
CKCC has invested in an online platform called Storypark that gives parents the opportunity to share what’s happening at home, see what’s happening in the centre and provide feedback to educators.
Storypark is a secure, private online community in which educators, parents and family members work together to respond to children’s learning, captured via images, audio, video, and text.
Storypark helps increase family involvement in each child’s learning, enhancing support and improving educational outcomes. Record and communicate learning as it happens. Receive instant feedback and plan new ways to extend children’s unique interests and abilities. Create accessible Portfolio records that travel with a child from birth to school. Teachers and families become co-learners in their child’s development.
How it works:
Families can log on to their Storypark account (either via computer, tablet, or the smartphone app) to read the learning documentation their child’s educators have produced and see photos of their child’s day. Families can also invite others to join their child’s account, like grandparents, friends, and health professionals.
Bush Kinder
Bush Kinder responds to a child’s right and need to access natural spaces for optimum learning and development. Regular sessions provide dedicated time for all ages to be outside, in a quality natural environment away from screens, a crowded school/sports curriculum and the bubble of being inside. Attending a bush kinder session will offer your child the opportunity to grow at their own pace, connect with others with kindness and creativity, learn holistically and increase their communication, self-regulation and confidence.
Bush Kinder is an education program for children held exclusively outdoors, whatever the weather. Children are encouraged to take the lead in playing, exploring and learning in a natural environment.
The CKCC Bush Kinder program runs at Wattle Park and has been a huge success. In conjunction with the educators, the children set a boundary area within which the children must play. The children have access to unlimited resources such as sticks, leaves, branches and so on.
To get to Wattle Park, the educators and children embark on their adventure by getting on the tram. Having an opportunity of catching public transport, the children can learn public manners and road safety as they need to cross the road and talk about the different traffic signs and lights. When the children turn 5, we impart the child with a big responsibility: touching on and off with their own Myki card. This big celebration is about having fun and sharing the moment on the tram with their peers and instilling a sense of pride in having such a big responsibility.
Children today spend 56% more time indoors than playing outside. To play in nature provides children with great hands on experiences by using different senses.
Firstly, they can develop gross motor skills, flexibility and awareness of surroundings by walking on uneven surfaces. Also, nature gives the children fresh air, green views and the sounds such as birds, wind, rain, etc and helps them to reduce stress. It improves their imagination and creativity with natural resources, they can concentrate on different challenges like climbing tress, and helps to develop self-reliance and risk assessment. There are more opportunities for them to interact with their peers, to help each other out, share ideas, solve problems and work collaboratively together.
Lastly, being outside in nature has been proven to further develop their immune systems, so those who play outside more often fall sick less than children who spend most time indoors.
Music with aged care residents
CKCC was successful in obtaining a Boroondara Annual Community Grant 2017-19 for a ‘Music For All Ages Project’ in which CKCC wanted to focus on inter-generational inclusion by partnering with our neighbours, this included an inclusive musical plan for our children to share with the residents of Sapphire Care, The Gables in Camberwell twice a month for 12 months. This program focuses on musical enjoyment for all ages, including for non-verbal and CALD attendees, a part of the community that is often overlooked.
In the success of this grant, CKCC was able to continue this valuable and wonderful relationship with the residents beyond 2019.
French lessons
Since 2006, CKCC has implemented French lessons to the 4-5 age group by an experienced French language teacher once a week during school terms. This program was introduced through our relationship with Camberwell Primary School, a bilingual French/English school.
The children are taught songs, numbers, the alphabet, colours, words and animals to help prepare a solid foundation in preparation for Camberwell Primary School. Some of the French songs are included at our end of year Christmas Concert.