60 Champion Street, St Albans, Christchurch 8013
We strive to support all our children to take managed risks within our environment. We understand the difference between risks and hazards and believe that supporting children through risk taking experiences helps challenge their thinking and empower them to become stronger, confident individuals later in life.
Throughout the centre our children are involved in all aspects of the centre day, from driving our child let curriculum based around their interests to supporting cooking or baking morning or afternoon kai, or cutting up vegetables for lunches.
As an added extra we have an onsite cook who prepares all our meals under a full vegetarian menu. Our cook works alongside our families with any special requirements to ensure that your child comes home well fed after a day at Preschool.
Nursery
Our small, intimate Nursery is licensed for 16 children and offers large spaces for children to grow and develop within the environment.
To support transitioning from home to centre, we offer free settling visits for all new children. We believe that this helps them and you to get to know and become familiar with the teachers, other children, and the space before officially starting. During this time, teachers work with our families to get to know the child's routine at home.
Preschool
The Preschool room is licensed for 34 children and within our Preschool we work to support our children's independence. Our large, natural backyard is home to our centre vegetable garden where we teach children about growing, harvesting, and cooking our own vegetables. Our challenging equipment allow children to develop upper body strength, and our sandpit and separate mud pit allow our children to get messy and just be kids.
Our vision: As we grow together, we learn together
Our Nursery has caring teachers who are passionate about meeting the individual needs of your infant. We work hard to ensure we follow the same routines that you have at home.
Our Toddlers Room has plenty of exciting educational experiences to capture your child’s imagination and develop their identities as autonomous learners.
Our Prep-school provides a wide range of experiences, activities and equipment to support inquiry learning whereby they can plan and monitor their own experiences.
We offer flexible session times that will meet the needs of your whanau.
I would like to give a HUGE thank you for the care and education Emmaly has received during her time at BestStart St Albans. Your staff are wonderful to interact with, and my daughter has felt welcomed and comfortable since her first day. I have enjoyed knowing that she eats in a shared, collaborative environment – I recommend your daycare to all of the new parents I meet. She is going to miss the sandpit and mudpit!
Our experience during our time here at BestStart has been one of the most welcoming, warm, and caring experiences we could have ever asked for.
I am so glad that I have chosen this place for my son. Over the last 3 and a half years I know he was well looked after and that his needs were fulfilled. He developed lots of skills and was always supported to achieve his best. We going to miss you all.
Really going to miss you girls and all the support for the boys and their growing into little individuals.
We are so sad to be leaving and I don’t think we will find a daycare like this one. We loved it here and the teachers were amazing.
Preya had a very good time here and she learned lots of things. She will miss everything from here. Thank you for the service.
