The Benefits Of Attending Kindergarten

If you’re the parent of a 3 or 4 year old, you would have almost certainly considered a kindergarten program as your little one gets ready to start school in a few years.

At Genius, we proudly offer both 3 and 4 year old kindergarten programs in all of our centres, and believe that our specially designed curriculum is fantastic for enriching our children’s cognitive skills, but also more importantly their emotional and social skills too!

When it comes to those early education years before school, kindergarten plays a hugely important part in your child’s development. At the heart of it, our kindy program is designed to teach your child how to love learning, which sets them up for future success as a lifelong learner.

Our Educators

Our passionate and empowering Kindergarten Educators are extremely skilled teaching professionals with the highest form of qualifications to support their working experience. Each of our Qualified Kindergarten Teachers have a minimum four-year university qualification, providing our families with the comfort and knowledge that their children are in the best hands. Working alongside our specialised leadership team, our Kindergarten Teachers consistently collaborate with a team of professionals to reflect and develop a brilliantly innovative program that will set your child up for a world of success and capabilities.

Here are some of the areas our fantastic educators explore and develop throughout our kindergarten program:

Social and Emotional Skills

Nurturing your child as the get ready to transition to school means fostering their social and emotional development, addressing any areas of concern and helping them on their journey towards becoming independent and resilient citizens of the world. We consider social and emotional skills to be fundamental to being ready to start school – much more important than knowing your ABCs and 123s! Our educators are trained to help our little learners slowly handle social situations on their own, including building healthy interactions with others, forging friendships and resolving conflicts.

Our R.I.S.E program (Resilience, Independence, Self-Esteem, Energise) has been specially designed to help children ‘rise’ through adversity, encouraging your child to focus on their overall health and wellbeing, ensuring their follow the appropriate stepping-stones to become more engaged and confident learners.

Language, Literacy and Numeracy

Of course, our program also encourages your child to develop an interest in language, literacy and numeracy which is helpful (but not essential) when starting Prep. We meet each individual exactly where they’re at in their development – offering a range of activities and explorations that supports word, letter and number recognition. Most of our kindergarten children are naturally interested in expanding their vocabulary, writing, reading and maths skills, and our facilities and educators are very experienced in supporting and encouraging this natural interest.

Some of these educational activities include:

• Introduction of jolly phonics + letter land
• Pre-writing skills, collage construction, drawing and painting
• ICT skills and development
• STEM explorations including robotics and basic coding

Independence

Kindergarten is an excellent environment for children to develop some independence and resilience. Parents will often find children of this age ready to take on more tasks, help others and handle a variety of situations on their own. We try to encourage this independence in a safe way – making sure things like washing hands, toileting, dressing themselves, packing up and having the confidence to speak up are developed in these fundamental years.

Our curriculum

At Genius, our kindergarten program is enriched with extra-curricular activities that support our children’s educational needs and wellbeing. It’s sometimes hard to know what your child is interested in, and this is a great way to get an introduction to a range of activities without committing to a full term of something! We use these activities and creative play to encourage our children's curiosity, awareness and exploration of their environment.

Our life skills activities include 7 areas:

Garden Guru Program 🪴

Sports Program ⚽️

Wellness Program 🤸♀️

Creative Arts 🎨

Music and Movement 🎶

Nutritional Ninja 🍎

Library Program 📚

Kindergarten children are also eligible for a range of excursions and incursions, with some centres offering swimming lessons at a local swim school or playground trips! Check with your local centre manager to find out more.

Kindergarten at Long Daycare

Our kindergarten program is run from 9-4:30pm Monday to Friday, within the long daycare setting. Of course you can still drop your child before 9am when the centre opens and pick them up when they close (hours vary depending on centre), and this means that parents are still able to access an enriched quality kindergarten program while being supported with long daycare hours.

Similarly, our centres do not close for school holidays – which is often a bit of an obstacle that parents have to overcome when their child is at sessional kindy! Those attending Genius will be able to access our full holiday program, with an exciting range of extra activities, incursions, excursions and themed days on offer at each centre!

Lastly, attending kindergarten at Genius means that all food is provided to your child. You don’t have to scramble packing lunchboxes each morning, as our in-house chef will provide all meals and snacks, cater to any dietary requirements and keep your child’s tummy happy and full throughout the day.

Your child’s kindergarten years are guaranteed to be full of fun and exciting learning experiences. At Genius, we are honoured to guide our children through these pivotal years and get them feel ready for school and beyond!

Head here to register your interest for our kindergarten program!