Our Program and Approach
At our centre childhood is celebrated. When they play and explore, children's imagination and curiosity is sparked – they enjoy learning, and are inspired to continue learning more.
Our play-based program intentionally provides opportunities and activities based upon the Early Years Learning Framework, for your child to discover and pursue their own interests and strengths.
We encourage children to laugh, think, question and learn. Their sense of self and confidence grows as they make connections with each other, and build warm, trusting relationships with our team.
At KU Burwood, we are proud of our reputation within the local community of providing rich education and care that concentrates on individual children in a family-focussed and supportive way.
Our centre is a welcoming and nurturing space where each child is immersed in a rich tapestry of educationally interactive experiences – a space where children are supported to be their own, unique selves, growing and developing a sense of belonging and empowerment.
Our program offers children the opportunity to engage in a wide variety of learning experiences and activities, each specifically designed to promote children’s confidence as capable, active participants in their own learning. Children are presented with a range of activities including gardening, arts and crafts, music and movement, physical play, block building, sand and water play, science experiments, early numeracy activities such as counting and measurement, and early literacy activities such as reading, drawing and writing.
We aim to establish immediate rapport and a sense of belonging in our community, as families arrive through the front door.
We greatly value the strong relationships between our staff, children and families, and we look forward to the opportunity of including your family in the life of our centre.
We Focus On
In addition to the high quality well-rounded programs we offer, all KU centres are also encouraged to develop an area of focus.
At KU Burwood Preschool, we focus on children’s social and emotional readiness for school.
We incorporate this into our program through fostering positive relationships with adults and peers, encouraging children to make choices, accept challenges, take considered risks, manage change and cope, and challenging and supporting children to engage and preserve at tasks.
In addition, we enable children to work independently or within a small or large group and acknowledge and celebrate children’s achievements and successes. Our daily practices provide children the opportunity to further develop independence and confidence with the guidance and support of educators.
We feel that the children benefit from this focus because they become strong in their social and emotional wellbeing and develop and grow as individuals.
Our Quality
Our centre has been independently assessed by the Department of Education NSW under the National Quality Standards, and are proud to be rated as Meeting the National Quality Standard.
However what matters most is what our families think...
“All of our three children have attended KU Burwood, as we believe it offers the highest quality early childhood program available. KU Burwood is a preschool that is progressive, dynamic and welcoming. It has provided our children with child-focused, play-based learning programs set in a fantastic natural environment. For us, the main point of distinction at KU Burwood was the opportunity for our children to interact and be supported by highly trained, experienced and qualified staff. All the staff at KU Burwood clearly have a passion for early childhood education and facilitating high quality, inclusive learning programs. KU Burwood is not a child minding service - KU Burwood is an education facility which has greatly assisted all my children in feeling safe, valued, creative, independent and confident about embarking on the next step of primary school.” – KU Burwood parent
“After an associated lifetime of 16 years and 7 children with KU Burwood, I feel so privileged to have started my children’s education journey with such compassionate, motivating and inspiring educators. KU Burwood has allowed all my children to grow, explore, experience and build a love of learning, through discovery and play, that could not have been established without such a uniquely tailored preschool program created to educate and inspire young individuals.” – KU Burwood parent
Our Environment
Each KU centre is unique. The best outcomes for children are created within relationships and interactions between children and staff, and children and their families, not within four walls. We work hard to create beautiful, interesting, homelike learning environments for children – whatever our setting.
KU Burwood has been open since 1970 and is a small early childhood service catering for 25 children. We are located next to Jackett Reserve in the quiet residential streets of Burwood, in Sydney’s Inner West. Our centre is housed in a council building with natural light and abundant shade provided by the many trees that grow within our playground and surrounding area.
Our playground is designed to allow children to explore nature and discover the natural environment. We want children to be able to dig in the mud, discover and learn about insects and to enjoy connecting with nature. The many activities we offer enable children to immerse themselves in the natural elements of their surroundings and feel inspired to create, imagine and play. Wherever possible we avoid using lots of fixed equipment in our playground. Instead we provide an ever-changing array of challenging and interesting activities and equipment, explored by children and educators together.
We also offer stimulating activities that arouse children’s curiosity and encourage them to choose from a variety of planned experiences, expanding their learning potential. Our playground includes natural elements such as sand, water, grass, mud, leaves and twigs, and we also offer gross motor experiences such as climbing, jumping and physical play, enhancing their overall health and wellbeing as they discover their strengths and abilities and feel inspired to create, imagine and play.
Our Reconciliation Action Plan
KU was proud to launch its inaugural Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in 2016. At KU Burwood, we began our journey to develop our centre’s RAP in 2018 and we are proud to present it here.
