Nurturing Curious Minds
Our Junior Kindy Studio, designed for
Our Junior Kindy preschool program fosters your child's curiosity and encourages independent thinking. We nurture all children to reach their full potential by developing their physical, emotional, cognitive, and social skills through varied indoor and outdoor activities.
Our educators care for the well-being of each child to ensure that their experience and learning is positive and fruitful. Children in Junior Kindy learn how to play with others in a sharing and rewarding way, and learn to understand their feelings by exposing them to new ideas and concepts.
Developmental Support
Making real choices
Children choose their own activities, groups and materials. Choosing is how independence is practised, so the day is built around genuine decisions.
Self-help skills
Dressing, eating, packing up, managing belongings, asking for help. The unglamorous skills that decide how confident a child feels in a new room, and later, at school.
Understanding feelings
New ideas introduced deliberately, and feelings named out loud, so children start to recognise what's happening inside them and in others.
Playing with others
Sharing and taking turns in a way that's rewarding rather than enforced, supported by an educator sitting inside the play.
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One educator to every five children, the Queensland requirement for this age group.
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Self-selected activities every day — your child chooses what to do and which materials to use, rather than being moved through a timetable.
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Independence practised in real situations: serving food, washing hands, packing away, managing a bag and a hat.
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Feelings given names. Educators who say what they see, “you wanted the red one, and he had it; that's frustrating,” because naming comes before managing.
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Small and large group experiences, plus time alone when your child wants it. Both matter at this age.
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Daily indoor and outdoor experiences that stretch physical confidence, climbing, balancing, drawing, building, and cutting.
Independence
Our Goal
In our Junior Kindy Studio, your children will play in a stimulating and happy environment and will learn to express themselves independently. Our Junior Kindy preschool program is designed to support and nurture your child's development with their social skills, self-awareness and respect for others.
Self help skills
Our focus
We recognise that as individuals each child has different strengths and interests. We support this by encouraging children to make their own choices and decisions through self-selection and child-initiated activities, which group activities they'd like to do, or which medium they wish to use for their next masterpiece. This promotes independence and self-help skills.
Where your child does the deciding
This is the year a child shifts from playing beside other children to playing with them. It brings real friendships and real conflict, often in the same afternoon. Both are the learning.
Doing it themselves
Wanting to dress, feed and manage themselves, with frustration when it doesn't work. Longer sentences. Sorting and matching. Testing limits to find out where they are.
With us: enough time in the routine to let a child do it slowly rather than having it done for them. Choices offered constantly. Consistent, calm limits.
Playing with, not beside
Genuine cooperative play. Asking “why” endlessly. Pretend play becoming elaborate and shared. Following two-step instructions. Drawing recognisable shapes. Starting to wait and to share, with support.
With us: cooperative projects that need more than one child. Conflict treated as a skill being learned rather than misbehaviour. Investigations that follow whatever the group is currently obsessed with.
Ideas and friendships
Clear friendship preferences. Long imaginative storylines. Counting and noticing letters. Sustained concentration on something they chose. Managing most self-care with reminders.
With us: projects extended across days rather than packed away each afternoon. Early literacy and numeracy woven into play rather than taught at a table. Preparation for the move into Senior Kindy.
Empowering Children
Empowering Children
One educator to every five children aged two to three, held across the day. If the room includes children over three, note the ratio shifts to one to eleven and explain staffing.
Disputes are expected at this age. Educators step in to support both children through it rather than simply separating them, and you'll hear about anything significant the same day.
Individual plans are documented, displayed in the kitchen and the Studio, and known by every educator.
Most children are managing the toilet during this year, some aren't, and both are fine. Accidents are handled without fuss, and children are never excluded from an activity or a room move because of toileting.
A quiet period each day, with rest for children who need it and calm activities for those who don't.
All nursery educators hold current first aid, CPR, asthma and anaphylaxis training, alongside child protection training and a valid Queensland Blue Card.
Seeing The Child
Independence gets built by adults who wait. That takes a team who know each child well enough to know when to step in and when to let a struggle run — which is why we work hard to keep our Junior Kindy teams stable. Every educator holds at least a Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care, and our Studios are led by educators holding a Diploma.
F A Q's
No, and the names cause a lot of confusion in Queensland. Junior Kindy is our program for 2 to 3 year olds. Queensland's approved Kindergarten program is the year before Prep, for children who turn four by 30 June, and a bachelor-qualified teacher delivers it. Junior Kindy is two steps before that.
No. It isn't a prerequisite. It's the stage where independence, self-help skills and social confidence are built, which makes everything after it easier — but children join our Kindergarten program from all sorts of starting points.
No. Most children in this room are working on it and many have it sorted, but it's never a condition of enrolment or of moving up.
It means your child chooses. Which activity, which group, which materials. Educators plan the environment and the possibilities, then follow the children's decisions rather than moving everyone through the same sequence.
There's a quiet period every day, with rest available for children who need it and calm activities for those who've finished with day sleeps.
It's the age. Children this age are working out that they're a separate person with their own opinions, and “no” is the clearest way to test it. We give real choices through the day, which tends to reduce how often a child needs to dig in.
Updates through Storypark with photos and observations, plus a conversation with your educator at pick-up.
Around 3 to 3.5 years, depending on your child rather than their birthday. We'll talk with you first and transition gradually.
We'll call you. If your child has a fever, is vomiting, or is unsettled in a way that isn't like them, we'll let you know early rather than waiting until pick-up. Exclusion periods follow Queensland Health guidance.
Most families are eligible for the Child Care Subsidy, paid directly to us to reduce your out-of-pocket fees. The amount depends on your family income, activity level and type of care. Services Australia can confirm your entitlement, and we're happy to help you work out your likely fees.
Close to home
Three welcoming centres, one shared commitment: helping children feel secure, capable and excited to learn.
Our founding centre, open since 2016, has 95 licensed places, a warm, dedicated team of educators and a Reggio Emilia-inspired approach.
99 licensed places in a bushland setting, recently refurbished, with a team our families single out by name.
A smaller, more boutique centre with 77 places across our four rooms, a caring team of educators, and a recently upgraded outdoor environment.
Ready when you are
Meet our educators, explore the play spaces and see why families choose Smart Tots.
