Southland Kindergarten Association
"Building a foundation for the future"
Mission
The mission of Southland Kindergarten Association (SKA) is excellence in early childhood education while enriching our children’s future. Our vision is to be a recognised leader in the early childhood education sector in the South of New Zealand.
Profile
The SKA provides an effective, high quality Early Childhood Education service that is affordable and accessible to all families. We believe that the most important foundation for children’s healthy development is play - and the benefits carry over into adult life. At SKA, our educational focus is on learning through play. As a parent, there’s no better way to help your child learn and develop than to play with them. Intelligence, thinking skills, social skills, problem solving, language and literacy are all developed through children’s play experiences.
The Kindergarten programme is based on learning through play and follows the Ministry of Education Early Childhood Curriculum ‘Te Whariki’. Teachers provide a wide range of experiences and resources designed to enrich and enhance your child’s learning and development. Teachers interact, motivate, support and guide children through play to try new experiences and develop new skills and knowledge.
Our guiding principles and core values include Accessibility, Equity, Quality, Affordability, Accountability, Safe Environments, and Acknowledgement of the principles of partnership in the Treaty of Waitangi.
Results
We have been helping children prepare for school and develop their abilities for over 75 years. To ensure that we continue to progress, SKA participates in a number of collaborative projects including a Ministry of Education Professional Learning Project to research how ICT can be used to support teaching and learning, a Ministry of Education Pilot on induction and mentoring of beginning teachers, a partnership with Sport Southland to provide environments and programmes that promote active, healthy lifestyles, and well as other high quality professional learning opportunities for staff to keep up to date with the latest theory and practice.