Mother Duck Child Care and Pre School Centre Gaythorne

• Environments Carefully Created for Children

• Care and Attention for Each Individual Child

• Play-Based Learning to Prepare Each Child for Success

• Strong Relationships With Families to Create Communities

• Welcoming Centres Where Diversity is Celebrated

• Caring Educators Who Love Coming to Work

• Yoga program

• Sports program

• School readiness program

• Art studio

• Incursions with the local library

At Mother Duck Gaythorne, the focus of the educators is on reflective practice to ensure they understand all they can about children and their development; finding new and innovative ways to solve problems, engage in challenging tasks, and using information technology and print-based texts to find things out; giving children the gift of time to listen to their ideas and incorporate these into the curriculum; sustainable practices to teach the children how to be a valuable member of society; and teaching children skills beyond academics such as compassion, collaboration, empathy, kindness, grace and honesty.

Mother Duck Gaythorne has a strong focus on staff retention. The centre’s leadership team consists of four long term employees with a combined experience of almost 50 years with Mother Duck. Along with the leadership team there are a number of educators who have been with the centre for many years.

We have a strong focus on the 21st century life skills and believe in building skills that will set children up for life, not just the first few years of school. As we have deepened our understanding of children as important members of our society we have begun to look at our work as early childhood educators through a new lens. This lens helps us to uphold and continue working on our belief that all children are worthy, able and authentic.   

Daneiren - Centre Manager, Mother Duck Gaythorne

I love working in such a positive environment that advocates for the rights of the child in every aspect of the curriculum. I love forming strong relationships with children and families and being the connection for families whilst they are away from their children.

Aerryn - Educational Leader 

I am grateful to work with so many wonderful educators that constantly challenge each other to be the best educators we can.

Grace - Lead Educator

Mother Duck’s own dietitian, Fiona Hinton, prepares the menus for the centre and has over 20 years of experience. Fiona specialises in real-life strategies and practical suggestions to convert nutrition advice into food kids will eat. Fiona has collaborated on several books, including one with best-selling children’s food writer Annabel Karmel, as well as training childcare staff in children’s nutrition.

At Mother Duck Gaythorne, the children play a role in ordering the food each week, often sharing their opinions on what fruit and vegetables should be on offer. The children are also responsible for collecting the food from the kitchen and bringing it to their studio for each meal time.

Each studio has a dining area where the children eat all of their meals. The mealtimes are progressive allowing the children to decide when they are hungry. The children also serve their own meals, wash their dishes and assist with the set up and cleanup of the space. The centre has a qualified chef with over 20 years’ experience who provides the children with a nutritional morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.