Nau mai, haere mai, ki Te Whare Kōhungahunga o UC | Early Childhood Learning Centre. Kei te mihi ki ngā whānau hōu me ō koutou tamariki. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.
Welcome to Te Whare Kōhungahunga o UC | Early Childhood Learning Centre (ECLC), the University of Canterbury’s childcare and early learning centre. We accommodate children from zero to six years old and accept enrolments from students, staff and members of the wider community.
We are uniquely placed at the heart of the UC campus and are conveniently located for you to see your child at any time during the day. The campus environment allows our children to explore their surroundings in a safe and calm way. Often you will see groups of excited children walking through places like the Ilam Gardens and surrounding fields as well as visiting departments such as Zoology and Geology, the libraries and the University Bookshop.
We follow the New Zealand Early Childhood curriculum (Te Whāriki He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa - The Strands of the Woven Web for the Children of New Zealand) and practise the principles of creative free play, allowing each child the freedom to discover their sense of self whilst participating in a stimulating programme. We also include Magda Gerber’s principles of primary caregiving into practice: when a child enters our care, we assign them a teacher who acts as their primary caregiver during the day with us. This establishes a consistent and trusting relationship between teacher and child, and when the child is ready, we encourage them to form relationships with other teachers and children.
We offer care on a per session or per week case, with short days (maximum of seven hours per day) and long days (more than seven hours per day).
