Butterfly Childcare Manly

This is why, at Butterfly, we value risky play and support children in experiencing minor falls, bumps, and scrapes as a natural and important part of their development. These experiences help children build resilience, develop risk assessment skills, improve coordination, and gain confidence in their own abilities.

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Healthy childhood includes physical mistakes. If a child never falls, bumps into things, trips, bruises, or scrapes their knees, they're missing opportunities their developing brain and body were designed to have.

Now of course we don't want children to get hurt. We don't push them beyond their capabilities or place them in genuinely hazardous situations. But childhood by and large is meant to include physical mistakes—many, many physical mistakes.

Every stumble, missed step, and scraped knee gives the brain valuable information. Children are calibrating balance, coordination, body awareness, force, depth perception, and judgment. They're discovering what their bodies can do and where their limits are. Those experiences strengthen the neural pathways responsible for movement, risk assessment, and motor planning in ways that simply can't be learned through verbal instruction alone.

And yes, sometimes those mistakes are bigger. A child may need stitches. They may sprain a wrist. They may break a bone. We care for them, help them heal, and, when they're ready, support them in returning to play. Children are incredibly resilient. Cuts heal. Bruises fade. Bones mend. Don't let a temporary injury become a permanent reason to keep children from the very experiences that help them grow. If an adult twists an ankle hiking or falls off a bike, we don't decide they'll never hike or ride again. We recover, we learn, and we keep living. Children deserve the same opportunity.

The consequences of eliminating healthy risk aren't only physical. Research consistently shows that when children have fewer opportunities to engage in developmentally appropriate risky play, they also have fewer opportunities to build confidence in their own abilities, develop accurate risk assessment, and learn that they can recover from manageable challenges. Over time, avoiding uncertainty can teach the nervous system that uncertainty itself is something to fear rather than something that can be explored and mastered, a contributing factor associated with greater anxiety.

The goal isn't to prevent every bump or scrape. It's to provide children with opportunities to test themselves, make manageable mistakes, recover, adapt, and discover just how capable they really are.

Because children don't learn to navigate risk by avoiding it.

They learn to navigate risk by experiencing it.

Proud Queenslanders Miss Lyn, Miss Michelle and Miss Leigh took last night's loss like champs and paraded the Centre in Blue today 🤣
We enjoy a bit of Origin rivalry at Butterfly!
There's always next year!

♥️♥️♥️ lovely shout out. Thanks Epromo.

Goodbyes are never easy.....

This week we are saying goodbye to Miss Kasey. Over more than a decade, Miss Kasey has nurtured, built connections with, cared for and educated the children of Butterfly.

11 years ago Kasey came to us at Butterfly as Toddler Lead Educator along with her daughter Annabelle (see last photo, she is now 12!). Over the years Kasey has worn many hats at Butterfly- parent (2 of her own Butterfly babies), Lead Educator across Nursery, Toddlers, Junior Kindy, Multi-Age Educator, Director at our Gumdale Centre and in most recent year as our Educational Leader- leading high quality programs and practice.

Parents will remember Kasey as the Educator who helped their child feel settled and helped them to grow into confident learners. Educators will remember Kasey for the knowledge she shared, the guidance she gave, the support she always offered (and mostly without being asked). We thank you Kasey for always being what Butterfly needed and for leading us to where we needed to go - always forward, always striving for better.

We know Butterfly has been your home and will always be- and we wish you all the very best on this next chapter, it truly has been amazing to have you on our team xx

Love that we as a service foster rough-and-tumble play. This type of play supports children's wellbeing, resilience, confidence, self-regulation, social competence, and risk-assessment skills, while also promoting gross motor development, coordination, and positive peer relationships. Our educators play an active role in guiding these experiences, ensuring children understand and respect limits, listen to one another's cues, and recognise and respond to each other's boundaries. Rough-and-tumble play is not a free-for-all; it is carefully supervised and supported to help children learn consent, cooperation, empathy, and safe ways to engage with their peers.

We are raising our kids in bubble wrap, and it is honestly backfiring.

When children do not get to express themselves physically, that built up stress does not just fade away. It gets stuck inside their bodies, which is why we see so much anxiety, trouble focusing, and emotional dysregulation.

Think about what happens when we just let them play. Giving them space to use balls, pool noodles, parachutes, tug-of-war ropes, or big heavy tyres. Allowing them to run barefoot on the grass, jump off low beams onto soft crash mats, or safely wrestle and laugh loudly on a mat together.

That is how they actually:
* Shake off the stress
* Move their bodies freely
* Build real resilience and friendships

Once they have had that loud, physical release, they naturally start to settle. They might be tired and energised all at once, but they are significantly more regulated than they were before.

This does not happen by micro-managing their every move or eliminating all risk. It happens because we gave them a safe, appropriate outlet to just be kids.

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day and the incredible women of Butterfly Childcare.

Every day, our strong, nurturing and passionate educators create a safe and caring environment where children feel valued, supported and inspired to learn. Through your patience, kindness and dedication, you help shape confident, capable little people and make a lasting difference in the lives of the children and families in our community.

We can't forget our wonderful male educators who play such an important role in our team. Your care, guidance and positive influence help create a balanced and supportive environment for all children.

Thank you to our entire Butterfly Childcare team for the heart you bring to your work every day.

Happy International Women’s Day! 💜

This March we thought it would be a bit of fun and a good cause to take on the National Breast Cancer Squat Challenge with our team. We have called ourselves “The Flutter Butts”. We will be completing 56 squats a day for the month of March.

It would be wonderful if the community wanted to get on board and support this vital cause 🥰

The Flutter Butts Why? Because 56 Australians will be diagnosed with breast cancer today and a further 9 will die. We want to make a difference to the lives of those 56 Australians impacted by the disease - that is why we are taking on the Squat Challenge to raise vital funds for world-class breast cancer research. W...

🤩We believe that play is to be messy, exciting, and wonder filled🤔

Our littlest hands have started working at Butterfly, with the Nurseries beginning to introduce some art and craft experiences.

In the nursery, art is not about a pretty or perfect picture, but the process of creating, the exploration of the art and different mediums being used. It is about providing time and space for each child to engage at their own pace!

It is messy!
It is learning!
It invokes wonder and awe!
Most importantly... it is fun!

If the benefit outweighs the risk, we make it happen!

To start the year with collaboration and a sense of autonomy the Kindy Blue class have implemented the use of a glass water jug, to refill their water bottles.

In order for this to happen, the whole Kindy class was involved in developing the risk benefit. We believe that the children are competent and capable, and they are certainly showing off their skills! As the week has gone on we have seen the children actively take part, engaging in using the water jug and also having a few spills.

As the spills are a natural part of learning we encourage and support the children in the next steps... to keep the space safe!
When a spill happens we follow the risk benefit:
- let a teacher know
- clean up the water
- let everyone know to be careful- putting out the wet floor sign!

We love these learning opportunities as they allow the children opportunities to think, hypothesise, investigate, and build a growing understanding of the world around us and where the children sit in it. This particular experience also encouraged early literacy by exploring environmental print and what it means...

So much learning and building confident Kindy community members!