Kiwi Kids Childcare Centre - Karori

In 2002 two women with the support of their families decided on embarking on a journey. Both with years of experience already in Early Childhood Education, one with a passion to bring her flavour of the Pacific to mainstream early childcare, the other with a long background in Kohanga Reo and pushing the idea of bi-culturalism into mainstream early childcare education.

In an area of Wellington where education training was strong with the location of the Teachers College, they decided to set up an Early Childcare Centre. The aim was to create a centre that was unique to the area of Karori. One that was in touch with a natural backdrop and had a focus of bi-culturalism and ensuring the children took ownership of their learning abilities, shared within the community so there is a sense of belonging. How ironic that this is now staple part of the Early Childhood Curriculum – ie; ‘Te Whariki.’

The site of Kiwi Kids was originally built as a dairy farm back in 1904 and later became a rest home. After the rest home closed in the late 1990’s, the property was purchased and the existing building was redeveloped into the childcare centre.

The original name of the centre was called ‘First Steps’ however after discovering the name had already been used by another childcare centre, one of the owners while looking across a nature reserve ran through the names of our New Zealand native birds. Of course our most nationally recognised bird, the Kiwi made the most sense to use and the name ‘Kiwi Kids’ was born.

In 2014 one of the women decided to carry on with the journey and became the sole owner of Kiwi Kids. Over the years there have been many changes at Kiwi Kids which has moved with the times within Karori. More migrant families have settled which has made the childcare centre more diverse culturally. And more young families have settled in traditionally an ageing populated area of Wellington. Through all these changes and 16 years service to the Karori community, our staff has changed over the years as well. A real melting pot of teachers from different cultural backgrounds eager to provide the best service for our tamariki… Our Kiwi Kids.