Glen Education Orrong Road

Inviting Families to Share in and Contribute to our Programs

Liang Li , Early Childhood Teacher

Collaborative partnerships with families are critical to providing high-quality early childhood education and care. Families play a critical role in the growth, learning and development of children, and children's sense of belonging. A family's involvement in their children's experience of the kindergarten program is a central component of supporting them to grow and develop. Grounded in Quality Area 6 of the National Quality Standards (NQS), Collaborative partnerships call for proactive, honest, and respectful communication. 

At Glen Education Orrong Road Kindergarten, we view family’s involvement as an on-going, essential part of our daily program. It all starts with small things, for example, at the beginning of term 1 we read each child’s ‘Get to Know You’ forms to have a clear picture of families’ goals for their children at kindergarten and use them as a part of the rationale for planning the curriculum. In this way, we are able to facilitate children’s learning to work towards these goals throughout the year. We also put children’s family photos in picture frames and leave them inside the room where children can get access to them whenever they feel necessary. It is such an effective way, especially at the beginning of the year, to help children ease their separation anxiety from their families. We took a lot of pictures of children holding their family photos close by while they were having rest time, or playing with their friends, or even playing outside on the yard. 

For the past few years, even though COVID has made family involvement more challenging we’ve started bringing it back, in line with the Glen Education COVID Safe Plan. For example, we invite families to come and visit our kindergarten to let them see what our program is like, how they can contribute to the program, and what they would like to add to the environment etc. 

At the moment, children are quite interested in role play of doctors, vets, nurses, and one of our families is a nurse. So, we invited her to do mat time with the whole group, introducing some medical tools, equipment, and first-aid tips to the children. Also, playing football has always been one of the biggest interests among the group, so, we invited another family member to play football with the children, teaching them some great techniques and skills. These special sessions with families not only have become essential parts of our program but also provide great opportunities for families to witness first-hand learning from their children. 

Another big part of our family involvement program is that we welcome children and their families to share some of their family stories, for example, pictures of how they spend their holidays, special family events or gathering etc. Since there are quite a few families that have different cultural backgrounds in our group, we invite them to come and share their cultural and traditional customs with the group, sometimes in the form of reading books, introducing cultural food or festivals. We take these opportunities as authentic approaches for children to understand and learn about diversity and inclusion as well as help them develop a positive sense of identity and build self-esteem.