GEKA Centre Road

Involving Everyone in the Building of a Community

GEKA Centre Road Educators

The one thing we all agree on about community involvement is that everyone (families, children and the wider community) can contribute. It can take many forms: from a parent coming in to read a story or to stay and play, to walking within the community as a group or when people from the wider world come into the kindergarten to share their knowledge and to teach us all something new.

At GEKA Centre Road, have had different members from the community visit our service to share their knowledge, over the year. We learnt about different cultures, and shared in the celebrations of Purim and Halloween, by dressing up and understanding the importance of such traditions.  Both events were important to some of the families within our community, in particular Elinor and Sharona (Benji and Ben’s mums), who were fortunate they were able to share their culture with us.  We also learnt about the 767-bus route – one child and their grandmother use the bus a lot and took the time to tell us all about it!  We also had families share stories from their family holidays throughout the year.    

As educators, we saw the enjoyment on all the children’s faces and know that celebrating with them were able to contribute to a feeling of importance.  Children and families matter and are an important part of the kindergarten community.

We often spend time with children, initiating conversations with children so that we can help them to reflect on their experiences and learning from others.  We have captured the voices of children and are proud of what they have learnt and enjoyed.  Here is a snippet:

Scarlett and Mia – “I liked the story about the boy and his jacket” (story Something from Nothing read by Elinor, Benji’s mum)

Neve- “It felt good when mum came in. We went on a holiday” (and they shared the stories of their holiday with the group).

Eugenie- “The bus goes to Southland. We walked past the bus stop when we went to the park. The 767.”

Elllie- “I went to Kmart and Target (on the bus). We went to Chadstone.”

Lucas- “You need a myki card to get there (to the shop on the bus)”.

Outcome 4 from the Early Years Learning Framework (2009), details the different ways that children can be confident and involved learners and these are best achieved when children are able to engage with a range of different people with a range of different skills and knowledge:

• Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity
• Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, enquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating
• Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another
• Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials