About Us

At Totara Kids Early Learning Centre we believe in creating a childhood rich with brain building experiences, child lead exploration and real, reciprocal relationships with people, places and things. When you enrol your child at Totara Kids ELC you become part of our extended whanau. We strive to be a support network, village and friend for your whole family. Totara Kids ELC is an environment rich in manaakitanga with our aim being to surround your child and family in a space filled with care, attention, support and aroha during the critical years of learning and development.

The environment at Totara Kids is designed to invoke feelings of home, inspire a sense of wonder and encourage exploration of the world. Children at Totara Kids will lead their own learning with skilled kaiako working alongside them to extend their interests, guide their physical movement and provide trusting relationships.

To ensure our Tōtara Kids values are maintained throughout everything we do. We have developed our own care system called “Family Care”.

Family Care is different from having key teachers or teaching teams as it still uses a primary care model, but makes it very clear where responsibility lies for care routines. It stops us falling into a more ‘crowd management’ style of ECE where one teacher does all the nappies, another supports sleepers and one is outside. With family care we remain relationship lead, give tamariki a voice and some say in the relationships they have with kaiako, while ensuring every child is seen, heard and connected with daily. Our teachers are not rostered into positions so they can freely move to be with children as they would in their own homes.

At Tōtara Kids your child will still have their special Kaiako, to be your primary point of contact and they will be the main person settling your child and supporting their care routines.

We have named our primary children ‘Ako Tamariki’. Ako is the process of teaching and learning and these being interconnected and reciprocal. We felt this better highlights how much we all learn daily from children.

Our kaiako have mixed aged primaries, rather than each family group having either under two’s or over two’s. This means children will not need to transition between kaiako or family groups during their time here, and better reflects a family environment, sharing the load of care routines and/or more complex learning extension between kaiako.

Our family groups are named Kea & Weka.

Weka: A large, brown flightless bird that has a famously feisty and curious personality.

Kea: A native parrot known for being super inquisitive and intelligent.

Key Words:

Kaiako: is someone passionate about investing in the next generation. A steward of knowledge, imparter of wisdom, nurturer of potential, facilitator of growth.

Manaakitanga is expressing kindness and respect for others, emphasising responsibility and reciprocity.

Tuakana/ Teina is the practice of an older or more expert tuakana (brother, sister or cousin) helps and guides a younger or less expert teina.