About

St Mark’s Child Care Centre is a ministry of Oakhurst Anglican Church, reaching our community for Christ. We see the centre providing a high quality service where loving relationships are nurtured and the community experience Christian love in action.

We believe that each child is uniquely created by God and the early years of a child’s life are the most important time for growth, development and learning. Each child brings with them a particular fund of knowledge and experiences from themselves, their family and their broader community each day. In recognition of how crucial these years are to learning, our programs integrate equality, inclusion, our understanding of past and current early childhood educational theories and ideas to support children’s investigation, problem solving and critical thinking through a wide range of play based experiences both inside and outside with equal importance. The work of Piaget and Vygotsky as well as the research and theory underpinning the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, guide our practice.  We use play and our interactions with children as a vehicle to promote a sense of identity and wellbeing, to foster children’s connection with the world and to help children to become effective communicators, confident and involved learners and contributors to their world. Our staff also provided all children with a rich Christian environment in which they can experience Christian love in action.

We believe that the curriculum must be designed to facilitate children’s construction of knowledge by encouraging them to explore, experiment, problem solve and share ideas with one another. As such we recognise a need for rich resources to support learning.

We believe that our educators are the foundation of our quality program.  We therefore believe it is important for our educators to continue to participate in ongoing professional development and work in teams to provide quality experiences for children.

The most effective programs encourage parent and community participation and involvement in their child’s learning. Communicating with parents is the first step and is a continuing process in our program. Personal contacts through informal, daily interactions permit the sharing of information between parents and educators. Parent meetings, telephone calls, email and newsletters are other means of communication with parents. These exchanges often provide greater opportunity for meaningful parent-child interactions and conversations by involving and informing parents of the happenings in their child’s day. Even in their absence parents can be active participants through conversing with their child specifically about the experiences of the day.