Books + Blocks Childcare Centre continues to be and strives to maintain its leadership within the region for quality childcare provision in development and environment. We continue to receive high praise and acknowledgments from parents of our children for the professionalism and educative quality programs provided. We are committed to continue to provide your child with the best of a stimulating, caring and educative foundation at this formative phase of their life.
Recent changes have been legislated by the Government for the provision of childcare in Victoria. These changes alter the staff to number of children ratio’s and must be in place and operational no later than the start of 2012 for all children aged 3 and under. At present the ratio’s permitted are 1 to 5, with the new ratio to be 1 to 4.
Books + Blocks currently operates under the present allowable system, however the Directors have decided that in the interests of the centre and the children that we introduce these ratio’s earlier rather than wait until 2012.
The nursery room numbers will be gradually reduced in maximum number from 15 to 12 but with the same staff numbers (3). The 1 to 2 room (blue) and the 2 to 3 room (orange) will increase from 15 to 16 with the addition of one extra qualified staff member to each room.
It is our intention that building works will be carried out during 2010 to meet the floor space requirements per child under the regulations in the 3 to 4 room (green) where the numbers will be increased from 20 to 24.
The kindergarten room (red) will run at its present capacity of 25 with the view to reducing to 22 when the 1 to 11 ratio becomes mandatory in 2015 for this age group. The green and red rooms will undergo some significant building works to cater for these new arrangements, however none of the works will alter the services being provided.
To coincide with these ratio changes, there are also new requirements for childcare centres to increase their qualified staff levels. Books + Blocks have already implemented this requirement and all staff now have a qualification commensurate with the future requirements mandated for 2012.
The company and centre directors have reviewed the implications of these requirements and have introduced a new fee basis from January 2010. This new schedule reflects a more equitable balance of costs in line with the higher number of qualified staff required for the 3 and under children.
At present staff and parents are focusing on implementing emergent curriculum across the centre which focuses on developing a child's interest in enhancing their individual set of skills by establishing an individual portfolio document. This methodology provides an invaluable resource for future primary school enrolment.
“The child is made of one hundred”
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking
A hundred, always a hundred
ways of listening,
of marvelling, of loving,
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover,
a hundred worlds
to invent,
to dream
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred
hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from
the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and Christmas
They tell the child:
to discover the world
already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine
forcing thought without a body
action without a mind.
They tell the child:
that work and play,
reality and fantasy,
science and imagination,
sky and earth,
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child knows:
The hundred is there.
Loris Malaguzzi
1920 - 1994