Early Childhood

HIPPY is a free two-year, play based curriculum of fun activity packs. Starting when your child turns 3, your HIPPY Tutor will practice the activities with you during home visits. Each pack has activities for you to do with your child and ideas so that learning can happen anywhere and any time.

HIPPY assists children to become curious learners and to achieve important developmental milestones.

Jirnani early Learning Centre is located at Lot 407 Bathurst Highway, Wurrumiyanga at Bathurst Island. The centre is open from 8:00am – 4:00pm daily. The centre provides culturally appropriate education and a care environment that offers plenty of space for children to explore, discover, experiment in both natural and structural environment.

We have under 2’s and under 5’s rooms in the centre where children get to engage with their own age group as well with others. We focus closely on children’s and their family needs and work together to achieve the same outcomes.

We believe Play-based Learning is important to a child’s development of social and emotional skills, language development of Tiwi language and English, and supporting children’s ability to develop positive relationships with peers and positive role modelling from their Elders, Parents and Community

The Alekarenge Family Centre provides culturally appropriate education and care service. The Centre is dedicated to improving children’s early learning and wellbeing outcomes. The Centre provides support for all families by caring for their children in a safe, supervised environment that supports development and education. We provide education and care for non-school aged children from Ali Curung community. Childcare activities focus on social, emotional and cultural development, as well as creative learning and early communication and language skills.

Jipingdila Early Learning Centre is located at Milikapiti at Melville Island. The centre is open from 8:00am – 4:00pm daily. We offer up to 15 children a day as our capacity. The centre provides culturally appropriate education and care environment that offers plenty of space for children to explore, discover, experiment in both natural and structural environment.

We have one large room in the centre with an area for babies, a quite book corner, areas with dinosaurs, wooden blocks, creativity and other available resources for children to choose from. The area is also designed for children to have a choice of an indoor or an outdoor activity and to allow a flow of children to participate in any activity of their choice.

The areas are appropriately organised with the intent to encourage children to explore their interests, curiosity and to encourage sharing and play together. We focus closely on children and their family’s needs by working together.

We believe Play-based Learning is important to a child’s development of social and emotional skills, language development of Tiwi language and English, and supporting children’s ability to develop positive relationships with peers and positive role modelling from their Elders, Parents and Community.

We know that parenting can be hard and challenging. That’s why we run programs to help you develop skills to raise happy, healthy and resilient children.

Who we help

Our programs help parents and families with babies and children in school.

How we help

We run different types of groups and programs to help parents in different stages of life. They focus on different areas of child development and parenting skills.

Here are some of the programs we run:

Tuning into Kids: Tuning into Kids is an emotion-focused parenting program. It provides parents and carers with skills to ‘tune in to’ their child’s emotions, while managing their own.

Circles of Security: This program is based on decades of research about how secure parent-child relationships can be supported and strengthened.

Bringing up Great Kids: The more we understand our children the more we can help and support them. One of the ways we can do this is to think about memories of our own childhood and imagine the world from a child’s point of view.

123 Magic: This program is based on establishing the role of parenting consisting of three tasks – working with behaviours that are based on communication, encouraging good behaviours and strengthening the parent-child relationship.

Wulangurrumatu Early Learning Centre is located at Pirlangimpi at Melville Island. The centre is open from 8:00am – 4:00pm daily. We offer up to 15 children a day as our capacity. The centre provides culturally appropriate education and care environment that offers plenty of space for children to explore, discover, experiment in both natural and structural environment.

We have one large room in the centre with an area for babies, a quite book corner, a dinosaur area with wooden blocks, an area for creativity and other available resources of children choices. The areas are appropriately organised and with the intent to encourage children to explore their interests, curiosity and to encourage sharing and play together. We focus closely on children and their family’s needs by working together.

The outdoor play area offers plenty of shade for children to play in, we have swing and natural resources available for children to explore their physical environment.

We believe Play-based Learning is important to a child’s development of social and emotional skills, language development of Tiwi language and English, and supporting children’s ability to develop positive relationships with peers and positive role modelling from their Elders, Parents and Community.

The Central Australian Community Toy Library Inc (CACTL) is a community based Not for Profit organisation governed by voluntary Board of Management and managed by a Director. 

CACTL operates a toy and equipment lending service for families with children from birth to approximately 6 years of age. Toys are loaned for a three week period, with an option of one renewal (extra 2 weeks).  At the end of that period return your toys and select new toys for the next three week period. 

All families, carers and community groups are welcome to become members and benefit from the variety of stimulating toys and equipment. 

Providing quality initiatives and services to professionals, parents, and children – we place children at the center of our support model. Our services range from professional development and online learning tools to programs for parents and early learning care for children.

We are an organisation dedicated to improving developmental outcomes for all children.

We work with each child in every family in a community to realise their aspirations for the cultural, social and economic wellbeing of the next generation. Education and opportunity are at the very heart of our approach, which involves working with Traditional Custodians and Elders as they lead the way in implementing the Children’s Ground Platform.

The Children’s Ground Integrated Learning and Wellbeing platform tackles the social, structural and economic determinants and inequities that currently underpin the devastating life experiences of children living in communities of extreme economic poverty. We respond to the multi-level influences on children’s development and life from pre-birth to 25 years.

The service system is designed to create a safe environment for children and families. This is achieved by privileging  and respecting the First Language of the individual well as their culture and identity. The culture and identity of a child is fundamental to their learning and wellbeing.