About Us
Our child-centred approach:
Children learn best when they are engaged, enthused and inspired. This is what we aim to do every day in Little Stars on the Lane. Then the learning happens naturally. We take a child-centred approach to learning. This means harnessing the natural abilities and curiosity your child has, to engage them in their emergent interests, support their enquiring mind and bring each interest to life for them. We always say if a child loves to learn and feels confident in their learning, everything else will happen naturally. We love to see our little ones get so excited about their world around them. We love to encourage this and to help them develop their understanding of the world in a child-lead way
Our language ethos:
Our approach is a little different with languages at the heart of everything we do. When children are introduced to languages in a fun way, early in life, they develop a positivity and confidence around language learning that stays with them through life. We feel that a few minutes a day can build very quickly into a large body of knowledge. This is our approach and we scatter language learning throughout our curriculum to enable this.
Funding Schemes:
We are acutely aware of the high cost of childcare to parents in Ireland. We do everything we can to be as flexible as possible with parents needs and to make sure we are as cost effective as possible. We are parents too and understand how important your little ones are to you. We currently take part in the ECCE scheme and the National Childcare Scheme. For details on these schemes, please see https://www.ncs.gov.ie/en/ and https://www.earlychildhoodireland.ie/work/information-parents/choosing-childcare/ecce-free-preschool-year/ for details. For the NCS discount, parents need to apply directly to the NCS themselves and then supply a CHICK number to us. We sadly cannot apply any discount retrospectively and should the system change and reduce your support, this will have to be reflected in fees. Please see our fees list with full cost and ECCE discount applied. We cannot apply the NCS discount on our fees list as the discount is different for each family and is calculated by the NCS Department of POBAL, which is the state body to administer public funding.
Full time care:
7.30am – 6.30pm Monday to Friday.
We are open on a full time basis for children from 2 years to school age. Children have a range of snacks and hot meals available to them throughout the day. These are supplied by Little Dinners, who offer high quality food prepared with no sugar and salt so that your little ones have a diet that meets their nutritional requirements. In the afternoons, we have a whole host of fun activities. We endeavour to give your children a home from home experience, with varied activities to encourage friendships, engage your child in different interests and inspire your little ones’ creativity.
Naíonra an Lána (our Irish language option):
8.45am - 12.15pm Monday to Friday
Established in 2011, Naíonra an Lána has been at the heart of the Greystones community for over a decade. With a strong reputation in both child development and Gaeilge. Naíonraí offer immersion education in an age appropriate way to children. In our case, we put child development and love of learning at the heart of everything we do. Therefore, children are introduced to Gaeilge in a gentle, fun and child-centred manner. We focus on building confidence, resilience and independence. The Gaeilge then comes naturally to the children as they are learning it in a fun, spoken environment.
Global Garden Gresytones
In 2015 we decided to extend our experience of language learning and opened Global Garden in Greystones. Here, children learn through the medium of English, but have fun activities through French, German, Irish and Spanish every day. The great beauty of Global Garden is that it is a small, neighbourhood preschool, catering for just 17 children each day. Our team love to help your children grow and flourish and find their own special talents.
The active language of the preschool is English, but with a focus on offering an introduction to other European languages as part of the fun of their day. It might be a song one week, or a game the next week. Each week, the children build on their bank of knowledge so that by the end of their time with us, they have a good, age appropriate, foundation in the languages, whilst also making life-long friends, building resilience and confidence, and making memories to last a lifetime.
We strongly urge parents to avail of all discounts available to them. We operate the ECCE and the NCS programs. ECCE applications come through the service and NCS applications must be applied for by the parent. Please go to www.ncs.gov.ie for more information.