Progression of Learning

Our Exploration Lounge caters to our infants and provides a safe, secure, home-style setting where your baby is cared for while they play and grow. With a specially designed ‘Infant Zone’ that ensures the safety and wellbeing of our youngest, less mobile tamariki, and an allocated breast-feeding chair, this space caters to the needs of infants from 3 months old.  Here, we create a nurturing environment to support each child’s unique patterns for development, feeding and sleeping. Experienced kaiako in this environment can best meet individual needs, follow practices/routines from home and ensure quality care and meaningful interactions during this significant time for you and your family. We are committed to making this first transition away from home as smooth and natural as possible.

Our Little Discoverers room consists of our Explorers who have most recently transitioned from the Exploration Lounge and our energetic Little Discoverers. The transition into this space marks one of the greatest leaps of change experienced by a child and their whanau throughout their education at WanaExcel. Our Exploration Programme has been designed and implemented to assist this transition for our Explorers. Numbers in this transitioning group are limited to just 4 children at any one time, keeping ratios at a premium to assist the formation of strong relationships, establishing a healthy sense of belonging and settling into the new daily rhythms that arise during this pivotal stage of development.

In the Little Discoverers, our teaching team works to stimulate curiosity and imagination, and provide a supportive environment that empowers children and allows them to feel accepted as they grow. By this stage, tamariki are ready to make the transition into a more diverse setting that provides a greater range of challenges and caters to their ever-expanding enthusiasm to learn. Our Little Discoverers programme has been refined to best support and nurture our toddlers as they develop and extend skills of communication, toileting, self-regulation, body awareness and independence.

Our Discovery room further supports learning through experiences that enhance cognitive, language, motor and social skills, and a freedom to explore these concepts in the context of the wider world. Kaiako design and implement a curriculum that provides opportunities for engagement in movement with music, pretend play, fine and large motor skills, and a wide variety of activities that are developmentally appropriate to stimulate early literacy and numeracy concepts. They are competent at modelling appropriate social behaviours and allowing children the space to discover themselves as individual learners. Children within the Discovery Centre are encouraged to extend their independence and will gradually take on more responsibility for their daily routine as they progress through the age groups. This includes skills to toilet independently, follow basic instruction and take part in excursions competently and safely.