Families in Calwell will have a new all-day option for preschool next year when an early learning centre opens its doors at St Francis of Assisi Primary School.
Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn director Ross Fox said there was significant demand for high-quality preschool in the area.
"A real feature of our preschool offering is risky play. I remember the first time I visited one of our early learning centres actually to open the Early Learning Centre at St Anthony's at Wanniassa and I was surprised to see a hammer, nails and a block of wood that the students were playing with," Mr Fox said.
"It's our job as educators to provide an environment where students can take safe risks."
The new service will offer a four-year-old preschool program from 8am to 5:30pm or regular school hours with options to enrol for either 40 or 48 weeks of the year.
It will be built to facilitate nature play, with a pine forest, yarning circle and water pump. The new building will have two classrooms with capacity for 22 full-time students and 44 part-time students who will be in for half a week each, alternating on Wednesdays.
The build is expected to cost $2.8 million and will be partly funded by an ACT government grant of $1.5 million.
The preschool program will incorporate religious education and early literacy and numeracy skills.
"We do have some intentional teaching around learning the alphabet, about letter and number recognition, about playing with those letters, developing awareness of syllables and the different sounds in words, which is referred to as phonemic awareness," Mr Fox said.
St Francis of Assisi Primary School principal Sean Rutledge said he was confident the preschool would be oversubscribed.
"It's going to be a very affordable option, especially when we've got parents here at the moment that are using multiple services, which makes it much much more expensive," Mr Rutledge said.
"I've got young kids myself who are six and three and it's been a real struggle to find real quality care options to meet the needs of our family. I know firsthand how hard that's been, so I'm really excited to give families that option."
He said the school was working on a traffic management plan to cope with the extra students at drop off and pick up times.
"We've got pretty good procedures as it is now so we'll be just looking to support and extend what we currently offer to integrate the ELC into that as well," Mr Rutledge said.
Kylee and Sam Hicks were very pleased that the early learning centre would be open in time for their son, Oscar, to attend next year. He'll be joining big sister Lily, who is in year one this year.
"Obviously there's going to be the convenience of the logistics with school drop off and pickup being able to get them both from the one place. But it was important to us to have him be a part of it as early as we possibly could," Mrs Hicks said.
She said Oscar will attend during standard school hours. She hoped he would develop social skills and some basic academic skills like writing his own name.
"It's really exciting. It's a new chapter for our son," Mrs Hicks said.
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