St Luke's Uniting Kindergarten Mt Waverley

St Luke’s Uniting Kindergarten offers a wonderful array of natural and recreational features that encourage your child to develop and pursue their own individual interests. Unique infrastructure, such as our obstacle course, promotes child-led learning through play and socialisation, and our beautiful river bed and garden areas allow them to interact with the natural environment.

Our kindergarten also features:

• Planned and intentional indoor spaces
• Large outdoor space
• Sandpit
• Trees and natural shade
• Vegetable and herb gardening beds
• Shade sail
• Play area with climbing equipment
• Swings
• Bicycle track
• Gross motor play equipment for activities such as climbing, skipping, throwing and catching
• Worm farm
• Water tank.

At St Luke’s Uniting Kindergarten, your child will participate in a wide variety of indoor and outdoor activities that teach children about arts, culture, nature, and exercise. We nurture your child’s sense of adventure and imagination by providing play-based opportunities to develop their interests and social skills, and our variety of community excursions and incursions broaden their worldview.

Activities and features include:

• Children enjoy weekly language lessons in Mandarin
• Children learn to care for pet Guinea pigs, Lovebirds, and Fish
• A wide range of the latest educational toys, books, percussion instruments and puzzles
• A listening post, home corner and dramatic play area
• Time outside playing in the sandpit, mud patch (gumboots supplied), home-style cubby house and play equipment
• An obstacle course for your child’s physical development
• Recycling and sustainable living practises
• Learning to compost through the worm farm.

We’ve been on exciting excursions to:

• Mordialloc playground and beach
• Box Hill Hospital
• Chesterfield Farm
• Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
• Kew Traffic School.

We also love to receive interesting, entertaining and educational visits such as:

• Hatching chicks
• Chinese dancing
• Rock Pool (sea creatures brought in to view and handle)
• Flying Bookworm (acting out children's stories)
• Monash Council visit on recycling
• Local dance school
• One Song Drumming
• Little Woodworkers
• Drama toolbox.

We focus on empowering children to make healthy choices by offering lessons on nutrition, food safety, and cooking. Children are involved in the growth and preparation of our home-grown produce to encourage sustainable living, and learn the benefits of physical exercise through play-based activities.

This includes:

• Growing our own produce in our garden (e.g. herbs, vegetables, fruit)
• Learning about food safety
• Discovering a range of foods from other cultures.

A foundation of both programs is supporting children in social and emotional learning, so that they possess a positive and healthy self-esteem, and are empowered to express their feelings, wants and needs, and resolve social conflicts.”

We actively invite families to engage in their child’s early learning experience by participating in cultural celebrations, assisting with fundraising and volunteering, and talking to the children about exciting topics. We believe in fostering a strong sense of community to broaden your child’s understanding of the outside world and encourage you to join in on our various educational excursions and local activities.

Parents are invited to participate in:

• Celebrating significant cultural festivals
• Talking to the children about their job, hobbies or other interesting topics
• Volunteering their time to provide support and resources for our programs
• Assisting with fundraising
• Joining the parent advisory committee/group
• Assisting on excursions.

We regularly engage with:

• Local primary schools (including visits from students)
• Local service people (e.g. police, paramedic, nurse, fire and emergency services, etc.)
• Box Hill Hospital.

We also participate in the Smiles 4 Miles program encouraging good oral health and the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program.

Learning Languages Program

In 2019 the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET), introduced the Early Childhood Language Program incorporating Language Learning in some Kindergartens across Victoria.

We are pleased to share that Uniting was successful in obtaining funding to introduce the Mandarin Language Program at St. Andrew’s Uniting Kindergarten Sunbury. The program will continue through until December 2022.

At St. Andrew’s Sunbury, Mandarin is incorporated into everyday learning experiences to give children meaningful opportunities to use the language themselves. Children learn this language through play, art, music, singing, dancing, and stories.

A qualified Mandarin teacher delivers the language program in partnership with the other staff at the kinder.

Learning in languages other than English helps children to improve their overall literacy and understanding of how language in general works.

Education experts have found that there are many benefits to children learning in another language at a young age, including:

• increased literacy
• cognitive flexibility
• bolstering self-esteem and wellbeing
• strengthened cultural identity

Our staff are English speakers and are trained to use some key word signing. We can have forms of communication translated and interpreted for families who speak languages other than English. Important information for parents and families is displayed prominently in our foyer.

Our educators are experienced in working with children who live with a range of physical and intellectual disability or have experienced challenges and trauma. Our relationship with the St Luke’s Church also offers a unique resource for the care and support of families.

4-year-old kindergarten

$549 per term

3-year-old kindergarten

$533.00 per term for 5 hour session