Environment
Our Indoor Environments:
Our unique natural tranquil setting of a beautiful old Queenslander home set on one and a half acres of natural grounds really set us apart from other childcare services on the Sunshine Coast. One of the most desirable features of Milford Lodge is its homely atmosphere. Milford Lodge will always be unique in this respect as it is first and foremost a home. So many families have commented on how it feels like coming to visit Grandma’s house, that we affectionately use that term on our Facebook page. Our indoor environments are far removed from the modern, ''state of the art'', overly sanitized, minimalist style that the majority of newly purpose built childcare services seem to ‘’sell’’ as ideal learning environments. Instead we offer a beautiful century old Queenslander which was completely restored and renovated with love and huge amounts of energy by Margaretha and Frank Prendergast who were pioneers of their time when it came to knowing and understanding what was important and beneficial to children’s early childhood development. The furnishings are reminiscent of a home from an era long ago encompassing antique furniture, soft furnishings, beautiful rugs, curtains, rocking chairs, comfy couches, indoor plants, op shop finds, items of beauty /quirkiness that encourage conversations and laughter rather than mass produced furniture purchased from a catalogue. Our indoor spaces truly reflect the home -with Margaretha still making all of our curtains, tablecloths and other soft furnishings.
Our unique natural tranquil setting of a beautiful old Queenslander home set on one and a half acres of natural grounds really set us apart from other childcare services on the Sunshine Coast. One of the most desirable features of Milford Lodge is its homely atmosphere. Milford Lodge will always be unique in this respect as it is first and foremost a home. So many families have commented on how it feels like coming to visit Grandma’s house, that we affectionately use that term on our Facebook page. Our indoor environments are far removed from the modern, ''state of the art'', overly sanitized, minimalist style that the majority of newly purpose built childcare services seem to ‘’sell’’ as ideal learning environments. Instead we offer a beautiful century old Queenslander which was completely restored and renovated with love and huge amounts of energy by Margaretha and Frank Prendergast who were pioneers of their time when it came to knowing and understanding what was important and beneficial to children’s early childhood development. The furnishings are reminiscent of a home from an era long ago encompassing antique furniture, soft furnishings, beautiful rugs, curtains, rocking chairs, comfy couches, indoor plants, op shop finds, items of beauty /quirkiness that encourage conversations and laughter rather than mass produced furniture purchased from a catalogue. Our indoor spaces truly reflect the home -with Margaretha still making all of our curtains, tablecloths and other soft furnishings.
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Our Outdoor Environments:
Our children would generally spend around 80% of their day in our outdoor spaces - rain or shine! We have ample shade for our children under beautiful big trees as well as smaller timber forts and shelters. Our surfacing is a mixture of grass, chip bark, sand, dirt, gravel & bitumen, which is broken up by gardens, rocks, repurposed timber, and white picket fences.The natural outdoor space is accessible all day every day to all ages and offers a large range of open-ended natural resources and opportunities for children to use in many ways. We understand that time to just be and learn in ways that make sense to children is pivotal. What the outdoors and nature provides so well is the open-ended resources that open up children’s imagination and creativity. Over the past few years we have moved away from purchasing toys and resources from catalogues and have spent time and energy on upcycling projects and gathering a vast collection of loose parts which are the foundations of many amazing play experiences. As a service we were concerned that the emphasis on keeping children safe was actually robbing them of a natural childhood. We hosted Niki Buchan for our first one-day conference in June 2014 and our focus was on outdoor play. As the group of 40 educators reflected on and shared their memories of their childhoods in many different parts of the world we noticed that we all had one thing in common. We enjoyed a childhood in the golden age were we played outside, for long uninterrupted periods of time with friends of different ages, played with very few toys, all the while unsupervised by adults!
The differences in children’s freedom over the last three generations are quite alarming. We lamented on the fact that even we had begun to wrap children up in cotton wool and were avoiding any risk taking behaviours within our program. We had somehow also become caught up in an endless paperwork trail, and through worry, wrote far too many injury and incidents reports that were totally unnecessary regarding simple falls and scrapes. We decided it was important to make changes to our environments that would offer children some of the opportunities we had, which left us with such happy carefree memories from our childhood.
Our children spend great uninterrupted stretches of time climbing tress, playing with sticks, rocks and loose parts which allows for imagination and creativity to unfold. We now celebrate bumps and bruises and share with families on tours our belief that scraped knees and bruises are a part of childhood that should be celebrated and families who choose Milford Lodge wholeheartedly agree with us.
Our children would generally spend around 80% of their day in our outdoor spaces - rain or shine! We have ample shade for our children under beautiful big trees as well as smaller timber forts and shelters. Our surfacing is a mixture of grass, chip bark, sand, dirt, gravel & bitumen, which is broken up by gardens, rocks, repurposed timber, and white picket fences.The natural outdoor space is accessible all day every day to all ages and offers a large range of open-ended natural resources and opportunities for children to use in many ways. We understand that time to just be and learn in ways that make sense to children is pivotal. What the outdoors and nature provides so well is the open-ended resources that open up children’s imagination and creativity. Over the past few years we have moved away from purchasing toys and resources from catalogues and have spent time and energy on upcycling projects and gathering a vast collection of loose parts which are the foundations of many amazing play experiences. As a service we were concerned that the emphasis on keeping children safe was actually robbing them of a natural childhood. We hosted Niki Buchan for our first one-day conference in June 2014 and our focus was on outdoor play. As the group of 40 educators reflected on and shared their memories of their childhoods in many different parts of the world we noticed that we all had one thing in common. We enjoyed a childhood in the golden age were we played outside, for long uninterrupted periods of time with friends of different ages, played with very few toys, all the while unsupervised by adults!
The differences in children’s freedom over the last three generations are quite alarming. We lamented on the fact that even we had begun to wrap children up in cotton wool and were avoiding any risk taking behaviours within our program. We had somehow also become caught up in an endless paperwork trail, and through worry, wrote far too many injury and incidents reports that were totally unnecessary regarding simple falls and scrapes. We decided it was important to make changes to our environments that would offer children some of the opportunities we had, which left us with such happy carefree memories from our childhood.
Our children spend great uninterrupted stretches of time climbing tress, playing with sticks, rocks and loose parts which allows for imagination and creativity to unfold. We now celebrate bumps and bruises and share with families on tours our belief that scraped knees and bruises are a part of childhood that should be celebrated and families who choose Milford Lodge wholeheartedly agree with us.
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A history of outdoor play at Milford Lodge in pictures...
