Old MacDonald's Child Care

At Old MacDonald’s Child Care, the holistic curriculum is implemented by professional educators. They offer a variety of incursions each year based on the knowledge of the children and intentionality of the educators. 

The centre’s play-based curriculum offers a wide range of experiences and invitations to play that builds upon their knowledge, development, interest, and skills. The experiences include life skill building, exploring the service premises, gardening, art, construction, interacting with the animals, music, movement, and drama.

The children have 8.5 acres of space and enjoy interacting with a wide variety of farm animals (including a cow, sheep, alpaca, pig, goats, rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys and a pony). The children explore the open farm spaces by going on tractor-trailer rides or by walking throughout the property to engage with the animals. The outdoor designed play spaces incorporate sustainability for the children to explore for hours.

The centre’s approach to early learning and development is based on the idea that children grow, develop and progress through a holistic play-based approach to achieve the EYLF outcomes and developmental milestones. Children are seen as co-learners with their educators, who role model, provide provocation, and offer a stimulating and challenging environment. The team understands that the first five years are critical in building resilience and strong well-being for future life skills.

Rooms and age groups:

• 6 weeks - 2 years: Ducklings, Lambs and Puppies

• 2 years - 3 years: Foals, Bunnies and Kittens

• 3 years - 5 years: Calves, Chicks and Billy Kids

The Old MacDonald's Child Care (OMCC) team consists of the Owner, Finance Manager, Operations Manager, Service Director, amazing team of educators (8-ECT, 12- Diploma, 10-Cert 3), a cook and a maintenance man.

At OMCC, the educators are focused on quality education and care to benefit the children's health, safety and wellbeing. Their best practice is to maintain, promote and implement high-quality standards of hygiene, infection control, monitoring risks, cleanliness, healthy eating, food safety and safety practices. 

The educators are committed to establishing secure, respectful, and reciprocal relationships and interactions between educators and children. The educators are sensitive, attentive, responsive, nurturing, and affectionate to children's needs. Partnerships between families, children, educators, supportive professionals, and the broader community achieve high quality, positive outcomes that enhance children's wellbeing, experiences and learning.  

As a service, we pride ourselves in placing the children at the forefront of our decision making. Through high practices every day, we meet and or exceed the National Quality Standards that reflect the National Law and Regulations. Our service policies and procedures communicate and outline our high expectations of all stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities in working together. By consistently implementing the NQS, the Law, Regulations, and our policies and procedures, we maintain the health and safety standards within the service.

Open, clear, and direct communication is imperative to the function of our service. Our team provides honest feedback to families about their child's experiences during the day. Information shared facilitates us to work in collaboration with families to support their individual needs and communicate what is happening within the service. Families receive a daily reflection that details the significant learning that occurred within their child's learning space, a daily eat/sleep chart outlining what their child was offered to eat and how long they slept or rested, and monthly learning assessments documented by the educators capturing significant learning from a child's perspective. Written forms of communication are distributed through an app that allows families to access the information at a convenient time. 

OMCC maintains more qualified educators than required. Our team of skilled educators develop curriculums and environments that support each child to achieve their goals across the year. Educators make decisions based on current pedagogy, learning theories and their knowledge of all children to provide a routine that meets their needs. This includes indoor and outdoor play times, toileting and nappy changing, mealtimes and a variety of physically active and restful experiences. 

Over the year, our service provides children with a variety of experiences that add opportunities for learning. From watching our annual sheep shearing to visiting with baby farm animals to engaging in educational visits from scientists, firefighters, police, and a dentist. Children and educators as co-learners learn about the world in which they live so they can become active and knowledgeable participants. 

Being a part of OMCC's community is an opportunity to be a part of a big family that truly is invested in providing the best opportunities to children in our service. 

Belynda James, Service Director, Old MacDonald’s Child Care

Babies and young children arrive in the early childhood setting already possessing vast experience, knowledge, and capacity to learn. At OMCC, we are surrounded by an environment that acknowledges this potential and provides educators with the resources to create opportunities where children can become comfortable and confident to engage in learning relationships with educators and peers. Through our play-based curriculum, educators can provide children with the opportunity to question, discover, pretend, invent, test, learn, make mistakes, and determine who they are. 

Tracey Harris, Group Leader, Early Childhood Teacher

I love the aesthetics and friendly culture at OMCC. The opportunities for learning through play are endless with the purpose-built design and rural setting. In my role as Age Group Mentor, I thoroughly enjoy challenging educators thinking around child development and pedagogy whilst implementing learning through a play-based curriculum with the children. 

Jae Crawford, Age Group Mentor, Early Childhood Teacher

At Old MacDonald's Child Care, the children are offered breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and late snack. The service's approach to health and nutrition is to follow the recommendations by the Public Health Nutrition team through implementing the Caring for Children – Food, Nutrition and Fun Activities distributed as part of the Munch and Move program. The hygiene and cleanliness of the kitchen are rated through the scores on the door system; the kitchen and food prep areas is currently rated the top level with 5 stars.

The centre's menu was developed by a nutritionist and reviewed by the Munch and Move team. Healthy eating and physical play are incorporated into the daily routine. The balanced menu is prepared onsite by the in-house cook with fresh locally sourced ingredients and supports the children to explore a variety of different foods across the 4 week menu. Changes are made to the menu in conjunction with feedback from children, educators and the nutritional guidelines.  Some of the children's favourite meals are chicken stir-fry, homemade lasagne, berry yoghurt muffins, banana bread and fruit platters.