About us

Our aim is to enrich the lives of children with multi-cultural and diverse backgrounds by focusing on the individual needs of each child. Our focus is to provide the best possible care and education to our young children in a nurturing, secure and home setting environment. We strive for excellence in our work at Little Pearls.

Our philosophy

At Little Pearls Educare we believe that the formative years are the most important years in a child’s life.  Childhood is not a rush, its just a pleasure. Early childhood is an exciting journey that we put our heart and soul in it. Therefore education should be given with aroha/love to children. Differences of thought amongst various cultures are woven together with aroha. 

We believe that every child is a unique individual therefore we aim to value and treasure each child whatever her or his gender, culture, race, religion, ethnicity, ability, or social background. 

We aim to be aware of the different cultural background of the children and encourage all children to respect and value those differences.

We believe that Nga Hononga / relationships are a key to forming quality education. Showing respect, aroha, and mercy are fundamental to establish strong, positive, mutual relationships with children. Therefore we aim to emphasise the importance of showing children compassion and kindness in teaching practice. 

We believe that children are capable, competent and active learners. They explore the environment through their curiosity, and ask questions about themselves and others. They develop theories that make meaning and connections for them. Therefore we aim try to provide an environment in which children can explore and try things out by themselves to extend their thinking. We aim to provide opportunities that will enable children to develop physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and socially.

Education is a partnership between whanau / parents, and the centre. The establishment of close relationship with parents is of great value to our centre culture and it plays an important role in children’s learning. It is therefore important to welcome  whanau in the centre. The kaupapa of whanau acknowledges that a child’s education is the whole family’s responsibility so we aim to work alongside whanau and the wider community in order to provide a positive learning environment for children.

We are in a bicultural country living in a multicultural society. We aim to promote te reo Maori and tikanga Maori in daily practice by making them visible and affirming their value for children from all cultural backgrounds.

We believe safety and hygiene are significant in teaching practice. We aim to pay attention to creating a physical environment that is clean, safe, healthy, and oriented towards children. Therefore the inside of our centre is “shoe free”.

The field of early childhood education is constantly changing. We aim to ensure educators to regularly participate in professional development in order to bring new learning into teaching practice.

We believe that experiences in the early years phase extensively influence physical and neurological developments, which drive biological, psychological and social responses throughout the entire human lifespan. We aim to environmental/sustainability  focus for early learning to embrace such systemic, ecocentric and transformative ways of contributing to a healthier, more equitable, more sustainable world – for ourselves, for our children and for the environment.