Our History.

Labrador Kindergarten first began as a child-minding centre, in Brighton Street, Labrador in the mid-1950’s. Mr Lew Rose built it for his daughter who ran it successfully until she was married and no longer had the capacity to operate the centre. In March 1956, a public meeting was called and a committee was formed to continue the operation of this valuable community service. The committee employed a new teacher and rented the building from Mr Rose. Due to Mr Rose’s intention to retire into this building in the coming years, moves were made immediately to acquire land for a future kindergarten near the Country Women’s Association rooms in Broad Street, Labrador. The Kindergarten relied heavily upon the voluntary services of many community members to continue running the centre and would have closed by 1960 were it not for their generosity.

By 1959 the kindergarten had approximately 50 pupils in attendance and with new land made available, a finance and building committee was established to construct the new and current premises for the Kindergarten. This was built over a single weekend in 1959 by a large group of local volunteers, including the bank manager responsible for loaning the Kindergarten the construction money. The Kindergarten received affiliation with C & K and was officially opened on 7th May 1960 by Mayor Alderman Harley.

Since 1957 Labrador Kindergarten has operated as a Community Kindergarten relying heavily upon volunteer families and local community to provide its valued services. In 2017, we changed our Central Governing Body to The Gowrie, QLD and became a Lady Gowrie affiliated Community Kindergarten.

Butterflies can symbolise true spirit, being yourself, light and joy. There is something very captivating about butterflies as they flitter and flutter around. They can remind us to move as if you do not get up and move you cannot dance. This movement represents children coming into their pre-prep year at the kindergarten to explore, discover, be encouraged, connect, belong and communicate to gain the confidence they need to move onto the next stage of their education, their formative school years. Butterflies also represent transformation.

In 2017 our butterfly logo was created to represent our identity as Labrador Kindergarten.

The idea of a butterfly was hatched at a staff meeting after discussing the butterflies that some of the children had spotted earlier in the day in the old Camphor Laurel tree at the front of the Kindergarten.

It was decided that a butterfly would be a perfect icon to represent the Kindergarten. The purple in Labrador was inspired by ‘The Gowrie’s’ purple and the green of ‘Kindergarten’ is the blending of our ‘Blue’ and ‘Yellow’ Groups.