Environment and location

Waratah Street is a quiet, smaller-scale centre next to beautiful Gunnamatta Park. We’re a one-minute walk from Cronulla train station and close to four primary schools: Cronulla, Cronulla South, Burraneer Bay and St. Aloysius.

We make great use of our beautiful local environment for the children's learning. We also engage with our community by visiting parks, library storytimes and many other local destinations.

Families love our centre’s community feel. We enjoy wonderful relationships with families and encourage their contribution to the children’s curriculum.

Spacious outdoors

Our new playground is here! And our young customers have given it a big tick of approval. It’s modern, spacious and full of exciting opportunities to extend development.

The playground features a sandpit with water feature, large spiderweb climbing structure, cubby house with slide, shaded reading nook for quiet time and connecting with nature, and a herb and veggie garden for our garden-to-plate program.

Environmental practices are important to us. The children love to garden and help with composting. They also harvest veggies for use in our centre meals.

Our team

Families value our creative and skilled team and the genuine care we have for the children.

We want every child to feel valued and appreciated. Inclusion and diversity are at the heart of our smaller-scale centre. We meet every child’s individual needs and we warmly support parents' goals for their child.

Our learning program reflects the children's voices and our team's talents. We have a passion for sustainability, cultural awareness, arts and wellbeing.

Preschool program

Our quality preschool program includes a deliberate combination of intentional teaching and spontaneous learning. It also reflects the children’s interests and each child’s learning goals.

We foster every child's love of learning. Children who are inspired to learn will thrive in every aspect of their development.  They will ask questions, process information, try new things, be happy to share and collaborate, develop friendships, join in games, and know they belong to a community of learning.

Our creative early education programs follow the Australian Government's Early Years Learning Framework, the only government-approved learning framework for children under school age.

Our preschool program fosters:

• Language (learning new words, following directions, sharing news and stories etc).
• Cognitive growth (concepts such as time, advanced memory games)
• Pre-literacy
• Pre-numeracy
• STEAM experiences (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths)
• Fine motor skills (pincer grip, cutting, pasting, holding a pencil, drawing, writing name)
• Gross motor skills (hopping, jumping, skipping)

Social and emotional skills are also important for primary school. We focus on children's development in these areas:

• Emotional resilience (self-regulating emotions, expressing emotions in a way that others would expect)
• Self-care skills (e.g. caring for belongings, tying shoelaces, toileting by themselves)
• Making and maintaining friendships
• Starting conversations with others
• Problem solving skills
• Developing resilience
• Sharing and taking turns
• Compromising, cooperating and working in a group with other children.
• Learning to adapt to changes in routines
• Knowing when and how to ask for help
• Empathy and caring for others.

Testimonials

‘The Educators show genuine care and affection towards our daughters. Each small achievement in their development receives focus from the team in a highly positive and reinforcing way. They treat our children like family.’

‘Our Educators are absolutely amazing! Our son has been asking if he can go to kindy on the weekends... so we know he is very happy at Waratah Street!’

‘You all do such a wonderful job... your caring nature, patience, persistence and fun-loving ways makes our lives as parents much easier knowing that you all are taking such good care of her.’