Willetton

At the beginning of 2023 we opened our lovely new centre in Willetton. We fell in love with the property for its large open classroom space and expansive outdoor area, providing ample room for children to run, bike, garden, engage in nature play, and care for animals. We are also delighted to have discovered that we are surrounded by a friendly little neighborhood and have found that the families in this area share our values and seek high-quality education, often choosing to live here for its top ranking schools.

Opening Hours/ Fees:

The centre is open every day from 7am to 6pm

Our fee is $132 per day for 2-3 year olds and $130 per day for children who are over the age of 3 for a 10 hour session. Families are not required to elect the 10 hours that suits them best in advance. For families that need an 11 hour day, the rate is $140. Our fee for each of the session types is below the hourly rate cap for the childcare subsidy. We are an approved provider, so parents can claim the subsidy. When enrolling we will ask for your CRN's and this will be sent to Centrelink with your enrolment. Once the enrolment is confirmed with Centrelink, the subsidy will automatically be applied to your fees and only the gap fee will come out of your account via direct debit.

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The Inside Classroom

Our lovely open classroom provides for easy supervision of all the children and has lots of natural light and a view of our garden area. We have a mixed age range from 2 years old until the end of the kindy year that share the classroom. We believe your child's age does not define what they can do, so we provide all learning in little steps, from the simplest to the most complex. In this way children are always able to extend on their current knowledge, without feeling defeated by being asked to do something that is beyond their abilities. Creating confident, enthusiastic learners who have the ability to work independently, with deep concentration, is one of our biggest goals.

Puzzles, construction, matching, playing...

We set up our classrooms so that the children can have the freedom to choose what they want to work on and follow their own interests. They can work independently or collaboratively around the rooms. It might just look like play, but all these activities are developing their ability to make choices, source what they need to complete an activity, concentrate, work independently and pack away once they have finished.

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Cultural Studies

Children have an intense curiosity for the world around them. The Montessori materials help them to make sense of their environment and improve their observation skils by giving them concrete materials, such as puzzle maps and sorting activities. There are puzzle maps of the different continents, sorting cards to classify animals in categories, such as mammals, birds, etc. There are puzzles and cards to learn different parts of plants and animals and so much more. Gardening activities also help them to learn to care for our environment.

French

My name is Alexa Young

At Smart Start, we believe in providing a nurturing and stimulating environment where young minds can thrive. We see that providing opportunities to develop language at this age can enable children to soak up another language with ease. In Willetton we have a fantastic, native speaking French teacher who can integrate French into many parts of the day at preschool, from music time to outside games.

Our French Teacher:

Hi, I am Sylvie and I am originally from France, moving to England in my twenties. I have worked in the education system for over 10 years, first as a secondary school teacher’s assistant and then as a high school teacher. I have also taught adults French, as well as being a primary school French teacher. In the late 2000s I moved to Australia with my family. Following a passion for the Early Years Education I decided to move into preschool teaching and studied a Certificate Three, followed by a Diploma in Early Childhood and Care, after joining Smart Start. I love the approach of Montessori teaching because it has an emphasis on hands-on independent learning. I find in this method children gain confidence in their abilities much faster than in a traditional childcare setting. I also love the way Montessori classrooms are mixed-age because this arrangement allows for children to learn from one another, teach one another, and develop life skills such as inclusion and acceptance.I am the French teacher here at Smart Start and I firmly believe that the most effective way to teach young children a second language is by engaging them in activities that they love and they find fun. Whether it be playing games, singing, drawing, or dancing, a child who is having fun is engaged and learning at their best. I take advantage of playtime to introduce new words or phrases. Repetition is key and therefore I do a lot of French games such as Cache-cache, Le Facteur, Crocodile game, and Va Toucher. I am always inventing and finding new and fun games to help the children develop their skills and their love of learning!

Practical Life

Practical life activities teach children the fine motor and real-life skills that form the foundation of the Montessori Education Program. Children love these activities which help them develop their independence and concentration skills. Spooning, pouring, using tweezers, pegs, hammering, screwing, juicing and threading are just some of these fantastic activities!

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Literacy

Preschoolers are at an age where they are absorbing all aspects of language. There is no better time to learn to read and write. Watch our videos and visit the Learning at Home tab for exactly how we take little steps to big achievements, leading your preschooler to excel at reading and writing!

Our educators apply the Montessori method, combined with Accelerated Learning principles to make learning to read and write easy, exciting and fun. You might think learning these things are a chore, but your child at around 3 years of age is at the perfect point in their development to soak up language effortlessly!

Sensorial

Sensorial materials in a Montessori school are designed to engage children by activating their five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. The development and refinement of our senses are greatest during the earliest years of development.

Numeracy

The Montessori materials for learning mathematics give children a concrete experience, so they gain a deep understanding of the processes involved. They always work first with concrete materials and move at their own pace toward abstraction with paper and pencil, or towards mental arithmetic. This helps them to internalise concepts at a deeper, more lasting level than if they had memorised them by rote. In our classroom the children work through a well thought out curriculum of steps from learning their numbers to complex manipulations of numbers beyond a thousand.

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Instrumental Music

Learning a musical instrument offers young children significant cognitive, emotional, social, and physical benefits. It enhances brain development, academic performance, and literacy skills while providing an outlet for emotional expression and boosting self-confidence. Socially, it improves teamwork and cultural awareness, and physically, it refines fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. The discipline and patience required for musical practice foster valuable life skills, leading to a lifelong appreciation of music and increased creativity and critical thinking.

We practice the basic introductory posture, care of instrument and playing on violin and keyboard. Our smaller class size on Mondays and Fridays allows for more one on one tutoring in these instruments, and these are the days where we do our most violin and piano work. Students also routinely enjoy performances and accompaniment on the keyboard, violin, guitar, mandolin, liuqin, dan trang and various percussion instruments. Music reading is taught through games and activities relating to learning rhythm and note value as well as pitch and music terminology.

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Music and Dance

We find music and movement is such a great way to learn things, have fun together and help the children develop their confidence. We have a music and movement session every afternoon and at the end of each year we have a Christmas concert for the children to perform for their families.

The Outside Classroom

We believe children need plenty of time outside to develop their social skills, gross motor skills, coordination, basic sports skills, gardening, care of animals and just for all the fun that comes with being out in nature! Our staff are trained in the UWA Kiddo program, a specialist program developed by academics at The University of Western Australia to help prepare children to be active and healthy for life.

Our Educators

We have a team of highly qualified and experienced educators. We always strive to keep educators very stable and have the same educators present for as much of the week as possible. This enables children to make secure connections with the educators and makes it easier to settle in if they haven't had a lot of experience being left before. We have three Early Childhood Teachers and each with varied specialty skills.

Sarah:

Sarah is a Quailfied Early Childhood Teacher who has specialised in Montessori. Sarah also has a bachelors degree in Communications and Anthropology. She obtained a high school scholarship to play the violin, has enjoyed playing with the Western Australian Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Perth Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the West Coast Philharmonic Orchestra. Sarah started with Smart Start as an assistant educator in 2004 and her passion for setting preschoolers up with the life long learning skills for success is what drives her passion for her work.

Jeya:

Jeya holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Teaching (Early Childhood Education), an Advanced Diploma in Children’s Services, a Diploma in Montessori Early Childhood Education, and an International Diploma in Montessori Early Childhood Education.

Kanishka:

Kanishka holds a Bachelor of Commerce as well as a Certificate Three and Diploma in Early Childhood Education and Care.

Andrene:

Andrene has an Advanced Montessori Certificate and a Montessori Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care.

Tiana:

Tiana is our newest educator, currently completeing her traineeship with us. She is a passionate educator and musician, playing the guitar and keyboard.

Sylvie:

Sylvie is a qualifed teacher for the early years through to highschool. She also has a certificate three and diploma in Early Childhood Education. Sylvie is our French language specialist and embeds learning French into many aspects of the program, such as physical education, daily group activities and music time.

Special Extra Activites included:

Dance
Gardening
Care of Animals
Music and dance session every day
Instrumental basics lessons on violin and piano
Brain Gym
Yoga
Full Montessori program provided by Montessori qualified staff
French
Mandarin
Incursions

Food:
Children bring all of their food for the day, we only provide small amounts of food in cooking or gardening activities. There are four main reasons for this:
1. Cost - We can charge approximately $50 less than the big chains and keep our price below the CCS cap so you aren't paying that extra bit fully out of pocket. That adds up to big savings over a year.

2. Your child will be going to kindy/ preprimary in the next year or two. They need to be prepared for the expectation, from their teacher, that they will be able to independently get out their food, feed themselves and pack it away. Our early childhood teachers have had consistent feedback from kindy teachers that this is one of the basics they expect and that children who haven't had practice with, can struggle to do. We want our students starting school feeling like they are able to succeed and excel at all aspects. Having them take responsibility for their feeding at school sounds simple, but you may need to experiment with what foods your child can feed themselves, what packaging can they open for themselves, what kind of lunch box is going to help them be independent and confident to do this etc. We help them with all their feeding when they need it, but it is always with the goal to get them being independent by the time they start kindergarten.

3. Children are fussy, they have their very specific likes and dislikes, they are often not keen to try things that they haven't had before. You know what they like better than anyone, you can see what comes back at the end of the day and know exactly what and how much they have eaten. A sample menu for one of the big chains has lamb kofta, chicken chow mein, sandwiches, Mexican beans & beef tortilla and beef goulash for their weekday lunches. You might know that your child won't eat lamb or doesn't like sandwiches, you don't get a clear idea of what they have actually eaten, did they just eat plain rice when the lamb kofta was their lunch option?

4. We want to help you be prepared for schooling and making lunches! It really isn't hard, costly or time consuming, if you don't want it to be. Some of our parents make beautiful boxes that have clearly taken time and effort, but a lot of parents just make a little extra dinner the night before and knowing their child has eaten this before, they can be confident they will eat it for lunch happily. Little thermal flasks kep this food warm all day and we help them pour it into a bowl and practice eating with a spoon/ fork. Children love eating predictable, repetitive things so they are very happy with leftovers or very similar lunches every day. Once you establish which fruit/ vegetables your child will happily munch on, which sandwich fillings they like and what crackers/ yogurt/ cheese/ sushi/ muffins they favour you can repeat a pretty similar boxes most days without thinking too hard. Don't overthink it, you have got this, and if you don't we can help you figure it out so that when your child starts school you are all ready as well :)