Totaravale Playcentre Open Days

16–20 March is Playcentre Open Week and Totaravale Playcentre in Sunnynook is holding two open days. We would love for local families with children aged 0–6 to come along, let the kids play, and see what the Playcentre village is all about.

Please bring morning tea and a change of clothes for your little one(s). And dress them in clothes that can get messy! Let us know if you’re planning to come, email totaravale@playcentre.org.nz.

At Playcentre we pride ourselves on the social connections we foster. Both children and adults often make lifelong friends while attending Playcentre. So, this year we are celebrating friendships by encouraging both members and non-members to bring a friend to Playcentre.

Playcentre Aotearoa is an Early Childhood Education (ECE) provider with a difference; it is parents and whānau who care for the children attending.

Friendship is important to us all, but at no time is it more important than during early childhood; current research indicates that social skills in pre-schoolers are more predictive of outcomes in adulthood than early academic achievement.

At Playcentre children get an opportunity to make friends with others outside of their own age group with mixed age play (0–6 years) being a predominant feature of every Playcentre session.

Neuroscience Educator, Nathan Wallis states that "the friendships that you establish in early childhood, and the social skills that underpin those, are more of an indicator of the child's future academic success than any of the cognitive outputs (like colours, alphabet and numbers). Playcentre has a long and proud tradition of focusing on developing children's social skills and they remain today as consistent with the literature and the research on what is best for children. I think we should be really proud as New Zealanders that we have something like Playcentre—it's a world leading movement."