Huckleberry Coast Childcare at the Arts Building

Help us fund this much needed arts based daycare on the Sunshine Coast

Huckleberry Coast Childcare was launched at the Arts Building in Gibsons in Sept 2016 as a warm, bright and welcoming learning place for children. We want to be a valuable place of learning for all curious souls, be they very young or mature.

An Art and Play Garden

We are now working with the Arts Building to expand our energies to the great outdoors by creating an Art and Play Garden.

The design and creation of a sculptural play environment using natural landscape, natural materials and native plants will showcase the Coast’s motifs of forest, ocean and shoreline; the garden will encourage environmental stewardship and generate educational opportunities for the community through hands-on learning and tactile involvement. Creation of the play garden will invite participation of all ages through building and planting.

We need your help to make this an extraordinary place!

Our goal is to raise a minimum of $5,000.

The money raised will be used to develop the Art and Play Garden as well as a well-stocked Emergency Preparedness Box, Classroom First Aid Kit, Art Centre Library and Natural World explorations.

If we are able to raise even more money then this will be spent as follows:

• $2,000 - Storage shed for outdoor equipment
• $6,000 - Exterior play garden fence
• $4,000 - New lino flooring for nap room and office
• $3,000 - Furnishing and equipment (expansion to 12 children)

Please DONATE to bring our project to life:

1. First log in by clicking at the top right of this page. If you are a first time user you’ll need to sign-up first.
2. Enter the amount you are happy with in the donation box.
3. Click the 'DONATE NOW' button. This will take you to a payment page where you will be able to complete the payment details.

Please note! Your donation is held as a pledge and will only be processed if this project reaches its funding goal of $5,000 CAD. If it does not, no money will be taken from your account.

Our thanks for your generosity will be writ large.

"Colour-rich" donors who contribute $200 or more will be honoured with a painted pencil crayon fence post carved with their name on the side. These will be displayed outside the Arts Building until the entire fence can be built around the play garden.

People who sponsor new plantings or natural climbing logs ($500) will get a tree fairy legacy plaque; benefactors who can sponsor the entire Garden Gnome Shed ($2000) will have it bear their name.

You Can Also Help in Other Ways

For this project to be successful we would really appreciate it if you could share this page with your social networks. This will help us get the word out to as many members of the community as we can. Simply use the social sharing tools either on the left side of this page or by clicking the ‘share’ button above.

Finally, if you are interested in following our progress, click the ‘follow’ icon above to receive occasional updates.

Whichever way you are able to support this project will be much appreciated.

The Arts Building, at 464 South Fletcher (beside the Gibsons Public Library), is the site of Huckleberry Childcare, which opened in September 2016.

A little bit about us...

Guided by Bronwen Payerle and a small board of volunteers, Huckleberry Coast has been working through advocacy and research to address part of the Lower Coast’s need for child care. A child care survey was conducted by Huckleberry over the winter of 2014/15 and a report released to the public in April of 2015. This information helped our society better understand the many needs of Sunshine Coast families. Child care at the Arts Building is a gesture towards providing part-time licensed care that is much needed.

Creating Huckleberry Childcare as a warm, bright and welcoming learning place for children, while maintaining the flexibility of the Arts Building for creative community workshops on weekends and in the evenings, is paramount to the vision of true community service that Huckleberry Coast and the Arts Building Society espouse. We want to be a valuable place of learning for all curious souls, be they very young or mature.

Warm & bright indoors, with nature at our doorstep

This is what Huckleberry Coast Childcare believes:

• Children learn from adults and other children, they learn by playing and actively being, and through repetition. Each child learns at his or her own rate and in his or her own way; Huckleberry will guide each child in personal achievement and in documenting the learning process.
• Outdoor learning is associated with positive learning outcomes, including improved academic achievement, increased focus, lower stress and anxiety, positive health outcomes and improved physical fitness. We spend time outside each and every day.
• Drawing is a powerful form of communication and an early literacy tool. Huckleberry encourages children to tell their own stories and record important parts of their day via drawn records.

A Typical Huckleberry Day

A typical day begins at 11:00 a.m. when children are met at Jack and Jill Preschool for the 1.2km walk back to The Arts Building. The walk is an opportunity to transition from one social setting to the next, identify and comment upon aspects of the weather, season, and neighbourhood, and to anticipate lunchtime. The class holds a group meeting after lunch to determine goals for the afternoon. Perhaps it is to measure how much the bean seedlings have grown; it may be to build a space station with all the blocks available; or to create rainbow paintings for the garden fairies.

Once the goal is determined, children work individually and as a group to reach their goal. We sing, tell stories and assume character roles as the explorations unfold. Children are encouraged to draw and record details from their morning at preschool, the walk to daycare, and the afternoon work they engaged with.

Thank you all

We would like to thank all of our generous donors who have helped Huckleberry get started. We are very excited that Huckleberry has entered into a partnership with the Arts Building Society and Jack & Jill Preschool. These two institutions of Lower Gibsons have offered organizational know-how, physical space and educational resources to our growing childcare society.

Thank you and all the best,

The Huckleberry team