Family day care for Oxenford families

Minutes from Oxenford

Gizmo's runs from a family home in Pacific Pines, opposite Jubilee Primary School, a few minutes down the road from Oxenford, and an easy detour on the way to just about anywhere on the northern Gold Coast.

Oxenford families have been on our books since not long after Katie opened in 2010. What brings them here isn't proximity, though. There's plenty of child care closer. It's that at Gizmo's, your child gets the same person, every day.

Why one educator changes everything

This is the part that's hard to appreciate until you've lived the alternative. In a centre, a child might be cared for by six or eight different adults over a fortnight, in rooms they graduate out of as they grow. Every one of those adults is a professional, and most are excellent. But your child still has to start over: work out this person's tone, this person's rules, whether this person knows they're frightened of the vacuum.

At Gizmo's there's Katie. That's it. She's the one who settles your child in the morning, who notices on day two that something's off, who knows without being told which cup is the right cup. Over a year, that continuity compounds into something you can see: children who separate at the door without a backward glance, and who'll actually tell an adult when something's wrong.

It has a practical upside too. There's no handover, so nothing gets lost between shifts. When you ask how the day went, you're asking the person who was there for all of it.

Four children, mixed ages

Gizmo's takes a maximum of four children aged 2 to 5, a mixed-age group, deliberately much closer to a family than a classroom. The younger ones stretch to keep up. The older ones learn to explain, wait and look after someone smaller, which is a genuinely hard skill and one prep teachers notice immediately.

Because the group is mixed, siblings can usually stay together rather than being split into separate rooms. If you've got two, ask Katie: it depends on what's free in the four.

What to ask when you're comparing options

Whether or not you end up here, these are the questions worth asking every service you look at. Most brochures won't answer them:

• How many children will mine actually be with, all day? Not the centre's total: the room.
• How many different adults will care for my child in a normal week? Then ask about staff turnover over the past year.
• What does the school-readiness program actually involve? Ask to see what a child's individual goals look like, not the brochure.
• Who tells me how the day went, and were they there for it?
• What happens when my educator is unwell? Every service has an answer; some are better than others. Ask ours too.

Getting ready for prep

Katie taught in a traditional kindergarten for five years before starting Gizmo's, and built the pre-prep program here around the thing she saw missing: individual attention in the year before school. Each child works to their own goals: pencil grip, writing their name, early letters and numbers, lunchboxes and zips, sitting through a story, asking for help. Delivered to a group of four, so nobody drifts.

Fees, hours and subsidy

Gizmo's is open Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8am to 4pm. Katie can start earlier by arrangement, but not finish later. The daily fee is $115.60 before the Child Care Subsidy.

Gizmo's is registered with Kids at Home, an approved family day care provider, so eligible Oxenford families have the subsidy applied to their fees and pay only the gap. Katie holds an Advanced Diploma of Early Childhood Education, a current Blue Card, and current first aid, CPR, asthma, anaphylaxis and child protection training.

How the Child Care Subsidy works here → · Fees and current vacancies →