Today we celebrated a special milestone with the completion of our new Kindergarten Centre – a vibrant, purpose-built space designed to nurture the creativity, curiosity and confidence of our young learners in their very first year of school.
The new Centre reflects the School’s strategic areas of action to transform early childhood education and to drive excellence in teaching and learning. It’s been designed as a safe, flexible, beautiful and inspiring place of deeper learning, while fostering the rich imaginative world of the child.
Staff came together for morning tea to acknowledge the completion of the Centre, with a warm welcome from Principal Shauna Colnan at the heart of the celebration. She shared reflections on the evolution of the new space and the story behind one of its most joyful features.
When Ms Colnan joined IGS in 2014, she began hosting lunches with students from across the School to better understand the culture and spirit of IGS through their eyes. During these conversations, the youngest students offered the most imaginative visions of their ideal classrooms – complete with trampolines, playhouses, and one recurring idea: a slide.
Among those imaginative voices was a young student in Year 1 named Lachlan, who shared his vision of a classroom with a slide. Now in Year 12 and serving as Head Boy, Lachlan was the first to take a joyful ride down the very slide he once envisioned, bringing a sense of continuity and celebration to the moment.
The story of the slide is a powerful reminder of the way student voice is valued at IGS. Ideas shared in early childhood have helped shape the future of learning spaces at the School, reinforcing our belief that creativity and curiosity should be nurtured at every stage and that student voice is one of the most precious resources we have.
This afternoon, Kindergarten students began exploring their new learning environment, with full classes set to commence in the Centre from tomorrow. The space promises to be a place where the next generation of learners can dream, discover and grow.
