Tralee Gardens Pre-School

Transition to School

Tralee Gardens Preschool is led by our assistant director, Nargis, an Early Childhood Teacher (ECT) for over 15 years. Her wealth of knowledge and continuous professional development allows for an extensive program that challenges children, as well as to support children in reaching their milestones.

In Preschool’s daily routine, there are many elements in the everyday program that assist children with their transition into Kindy. This includes, but not limited to, separate toilets for boys and girls, understanding how to take care of their belongings (e.g., hat, bag, artwork, etc.), early literacy, and numeracy experiences (including letter and number recognition and writing), emotional regulation, and essential social skills through the PALS program, as well as how to make friends!

Towards the end of the year, children who are transitioning into Kindy will be asked to bring in their lunchboxes to practice opening/closing their lunch boxes. Sandwiches will be provided during this time and will be placed in each lunch box.

PALS program

Tralee Gardens Preschool uses the PALS social skills program to support children’s social skills in their play. The PALS (Playing and Learning to Socialise) social skills program teaches children from 3 to 6 years of age about greeting others, listening, sharing, taking turns, dealing with feelings of fear, sadness, and anger, and solving problems. Learning social skills like these in early childhood is just as important as learning numeracy and literacy, and of the utmost importance for children’s future development. The PALS social skills program is an Australian research-based educational resources developed by clinical psychologists and early childhood teachers, for use in everyday practice in early learning settings.

Cooking

Using age-appropriate utensils and ingredients, the educators guide the children into becoming more independent, giving them opportunities to pour, stir, measure, and mix ingredients. Cooking gives children unique ways to practice their social skills, including sharing and taking turns.

Sustainability

Taking care of the environment is an important responsibility to learn from a young age. Tralee Gardens Centre for Babies & Toddlers mission is to ensure children have opportunities to learn the different ways to take care of the world around them. Activities include recycling and reusing items, feeding the centre’s chickens and taking care of the vegetable garden and worm farm.

ICT

Technology has increasingly become a great tool for investigating, discovery, and interactions for children at Tralee Gardens. Engaging in ICT experiences offers opportunities for children to explore their ideas in new ways. Children input their expressions for their interests in various ways through ICT. The skills children strengthen by using technology is essential in the early years, especially before transitioning to Kindy.

Yoga & meditation

This program provides opportunities for children to practice their balancing, stretching, and listening skills. Educators use visual aids to assist with the movements, as well as guidance via modeling the movements. Meditation improves a child’s wellbeing and encourages the use of imagination in unique ways. 

Sports

With the extensive resources available in all rooms, educators encourage children to participate in sporting activities through challenging, age-appropriate obstacles. Children are exposed to different sports, like soccer, tennis, and basketball. Social skills are practised through taking turns and encouraging other children. Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) differ every week and are used to practice important physical skills, like catching, throwing and jumping. Our Preschoolers also have opportunities to join our Sports classes led by the team at Futureroo! 

Multicultural dancing

As a multicultural community, Tralee Gardens Centre loves to use different music from different cultures to use for dancing. Families are encouraged to suggest music that they enjoy listening to with their children at home, to be played at the centre.

Language and Literacy

Literacy and language development in Early Education is enhanced by experiences such as visual, linguistic, and cognitive strategies. The centre uses the ELLA (Early Learning Languages Australia) app, a multi-lingual good morning song, rhymes and counting in different languages as well as spontaneous conversations with bilingual educators, to encourage the learning of other languages.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives

In 2022, the Australian Government Department of Education updated the Early Years Learning Framework (Early childhood curriculum framework) to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives into everyday practice in early learning settings. Tralee Gardens has always implemented many elements of the program to support children’s knowledge of Aboriginal culture and perspectives. This creates a respectful environment for children to grow in their knowledge of the world around them.

Dramatic Play

In dramatic play, children act as if their imagined world was an active word and represent familiar feelings, thoughts, actions, and feelings for themselves. Children develop skills in listening and speaking, express ideas and feelings through language and action, and practice working cooperatively with confidence as individuals, small groups, and in large groups.

Tralee Gardens Centre follows the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), which understands that children learn and explore through play. Their understanding of the world develops through communication, discovery, imagination, and creation. The EYLF aims to develop in your child a strong sense of identity, connection and contribution to their world, a strong sense of wellbeing, confidence and involvement in learning, and effective communication skills.

The EYLF vision is for all children to experience play based learning that is engaging and builds success for life. Children are provided stimulating learning environments based on their interests indoors and outdoors to engage them in meaningful play. Children learn about themselves and construct their own identity within the context of their families and communities.

EYLF is socially and intellectually engaging and personally meaningful to children. Educators follow the children’s lead and introduce new and exciting activities to sustain their interests and deepen their explorations.

Nursery

The nurturing educators in the nursery provide your little one with opportunities to grow in their understanding of the world around them through play and through activities such as music, dance, and spontaneous exploration with appropriate equipment, toys, and resources.

The educators ensure your child has the confidence, independence and skills to succeed in future learning. 

Toddlers 

The play-based program gives children a starting point to enhance their emotional, social, language and self-help skills. The toddler room creates a social environment with group activities, dancing and fun learning activities which foster the children’s overall development.

The educators in the toddler room ensure your child has a chance to practice their social skills, like sharing, taking turns, as well as understanding their emotions. 

Children explore a range of activities based on their interests to further develop their competence and confidence in areas of motor development, social skills, independence skills, language skills and critical thinking skills.

Preschool

Tralee Gardens is licenced for 39 pre-schoolers, and therefore cater for a variety of developmental stages between the age of 3 and 6 years. All children will have opportunities to enhance the essential independent skills needed when they move on to Kindy. This includes but not limited to, toileting (with separate toilets for boys and girls), opportunities to strengthen their social skills, such as turn-taking and understanding feelings, through the PALS program and using games and activities to encourage early literacy and numeracy skills. 

With our spacious indoor and outdoor spaces, children in preschool will be given many choices for their play. Extra-curricular activities such as multi-sports and art classes are also available for children during the week. We support lots of local community organisations, which allows for incursions of a wide range of topics, including road safety, sustainability, and multiculturalism.