Welcome to Armstrong Creek

The people behind the building

Last week we had the pleasure of welcoming our first Armstrong Creek families to our Meet & Greet evening.

Hosted by Lynda Salvo, our Founder and CEO, the evening was really about something very simple: welcoming our new families into Explorers and giving them the chance to meet the people who will be caring for, educating and supporting their children.

Families met Terri, our Armstrong Creek Centre Director, and Jamie-Lee, our Educational Leader, two of the people who will bring Armstrong Creek to life every day. They were joined by Megan and Margie from our Pedagogy Team, who work closely with our centres to support educators, strengthen curriculum and keep challenging and developing our educational practice.

For Lynda, having these conversations personally with families matters. Explorers began almost 20 years ago as a family owned early learning organisation and although we’ve grown considerably since then, we never want to lose that sense of connection. We want families to know the people caring for their children and we want to know our families too.

So for those who couldn’t join us and as a recap for those who could, here’s some of what we talked about.

Children learn through relationships.

It starts with relationships

Feel safe. Feel known. Feel connected.

Before the projects, the learning experiences or the beautiful environments, children need to feel safe, known, valued and connected.

This matters most for our youngest children. Their relationships with educators create the security they need to explore, build confidence and get stuck into learning.

And relationships don’t stop with children. We see our relationship with families as a partnership. We want to know your child through you, their personality, interests, culture, routines and the things that bring them joy and for you to know the people sharing these important years with your family.

Learning starts with joy

Wonder. Investigate. Play. Get deeply engaged.

Joy is one of our Explorers values and it’s also an intentional part of our curriculum. We believe childhood should be joyful.

That doesn’t mean every moment needs to be easy. Children can feel joy while working incredibly hard: building something that keeps falling over, mastering a physical challenge, getting completely covered in mud, creating something for hours, negotiating with friends or finally working out something they couldn’t do yesterday.

We want Armstrong Creek to be a place children are excited to arrive at, with the time and space to wonder, investigate, create, play and become deeply engaged in their learning. Joy isn’t separate from learning, it’s part of how we learn.

Learning from babies through to school

Capable learners, from day one.

Families also heard about our Explorers curriculum and the thinking behind the learning experiences they’ll see every day.

Our approach is strongly influenced by the educational philosophy of Reggio Emilia, including our image of children as capable learners, the importance of relationships and the many ways children communicate, investigate and express their ideas.

We believe educators need to keep learning too. That’s why we invest in their professional development, including sending Explorers educators and leaders to Reggio Emilia in Italy to learn directly from the place that has inspired so much of our practice.

For children, this means learning isn’t simply something an educator delivers. Our educators observe. They listen. They ask questions. They notice what children are curious about and create opportunities for those ideas to grow.

Why does Armstrong Creek look so different?

Learning about nature, in nature, from nature.

Our outdoor environments have been intentionally designed to deepen children’s relationship with nature, recognising that we aren’t separate from the natural world. We’re part of it.

That means you’ll see spaces that invite mud, water, plants, loose parts, challenge, movement, experimentation and appropriate risk. You might see a child balancing somewhere that makes you look twice. You may pick up a child who is muddier than when you dropped them off. You might see children using a space in a completely different way to what the adults who designed it imagined.

Often, that’s exactly the point.

A little pedagogical bravery

Question. Challenge. Trust. Change.

As Explorers approaches its 20th year, Lynda shared some reflections on where we began and how early childhood education and Explorers has evolved.

Our earliest centres had a strong connection to nature. There was mud, mess, challenge and risk. Over time, as our focus on safety and compliance rightly grew, we also became more cautious.

Safety and compliance are incredibly important and always will be. But they need to exist alongside great pedagogy. That takes something we’ve begun calling pedagogical bravery: being willing to question our practice, challenge our assumptions, trust children and educators and let what we learn change what we do.

A beautiful environment alone doesn’t create extraordinary learning.

Our educators bring it to life. That’s why this evening wasn’t a presentation, it was a conversation between Lynda, Terri, Jamie-Lee, Megan and Margie. It’s also how we want Armstrong Creek to operate: together.

Now the exciting part begins

The children will write this story.

A great deal of thought has gone into creating Armstrong Creek. But the building isn’t the story. The children will write that.

They’ll discover things we hadn’t anticipated. Use spaces in ways we hadn’t imagined. Build relationships. Test ideas. Make mistakes. Get messy. Create. Question. And teach us things along the way.

And there’s a whole Explorers team around them: Terri leading the centre, Jamie-Lee leading educational practice, Megan and Margie supporting pedagogy and Lynda and our broader Explorers team continuing to be part of the journey.

Ready is about more than writing your name

We know school readiness matters to families. Our Ready Program has been developed specifically to support children’s transition to school.

But being ready for school is about far more than writing your name or recognising numbers. It’s also being able to ask for help, join a group, persist when something is difficult, communicate an idea, solve a problem, build friendships, stay curious and become increasingly independent.

These capabilities don’t suddenly begin the year before school. They grow throughout childhood, which is why the relationships, experiences and learning that start in our nursery rooms matter just as much.

To everyone who joined us, thank you. We loved meeting you, hearing your questions and getting to know your families.

And to those who couldn’t make it, there’ll be many more chances to meet us, talk with us and be part of what we’re creating.

Because although Armstrong Creek is a brand new centre, we want it to feel like a community from the very beginning.

Welcome to the Explorers family.