BestStart Montessori Kapiti

Kia ora and welcome to BestStart Montessori Kapiti (formerly Montessori Kapiti) located in the beautiful township of Paraparaumu Beach.

Our Centre Philosophy - Peace and harmony are at the root of everything we do. We believe our centre has a social mission to support the children to learn how to develop their emotional intelligence and interact in a confident and peaceful way with peers and adults while showing them ways they can be active citizens and contribute to their community. To achieve this mission, we follow the philosophy and pedagogy of Maria Montessori within the New Zealand Early childhood Curriculum (Te Whāriki).

Our childcare centre has three rooms – Nido for our babies, Bambini for toddlers and Casa for our 3 to 6 year olds. Children transition from one room to the next when they are socially and emotionally ready to grow.

We provide morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and if needed, breakfast and late snack. Michele, our cook, is a trained chef with a passion for developing in children a love of cooking and understanding of where our food comes from. We provide a healthy and nutritious vegetarian menu, including seasonal produce from our own garden as well as daily physical activities for our tamariki. We cater for other dietary requirements such as vegan or food allergies.

We have a lovely, calm, aesthetically pleasing environment where your child will be independent and take responsibility for their own learning, taking care of themselves, others and the environment. They will develop their ability to concentrate for longer periods of time. They will engage in Montessori activities that support the development of their senses, natural curiosity, engaging their minds and developing control of their bodies. They will become very familiar with numbers and letters and discover the world by playing with puzzles, maps and learning about continents and countries. They will experiment with science, explore the names of the plants and the names of the shapes of the leaves as they garden and take nature walks. They will be active citizens and contribute to their local community. We go on weekly visits to Kapiti Primary Montessori class, on fortnightly visits to the Kapiti Retirement Trust and much more. Children discover places of significance in the community and the local stories. We sing and get moving with kapa haka every day.

We have a friendly Montessori trained teaching team experienced in working with infants, toddlers, young children and primary school environments. Teachers value your input and work in partnership with parents and whanau, following your child’s interests and developing individualised learning plans specific to your child strengths and your aspirations for their learning. We engage in speaking Te Reo Māori as well as the children’s or the teachers’ native languages: currently this include French, Italian, Spanish. 

We offer 4 hours sessions, all day care with a short day of 7 hours,  all day care with a full day of 8 hours or more. We are open from 7.30am to 6 pm, Monday to Friday.