Child Care Center
We promote the compatibility of career and family at the Vienna BioCenter!
At the VBC Child Care Center, we are proud to offer professional, reliable, and flexible child care for all Vienna BioCenter employees.
Our highly motivated team of qualified pedagogues works every day to create a loving and caring atmosphere for children from 3 months to 6 years of age. Our daycare is a positive and stimulating environment that provides everything a child’s heart desires.
Best care for kids and service for parents
- We have more qualified personnel per group than required by Viennese law.
- We offer extended opening hours to cover the individual needs of parents:
- Kindergarten location Helmut-Qualtinger-Gasse: Monday to Friday from 7:30am to 6pm.
- Kindergarten location Maria-Jacobi-Gasse: Monday to Friday from 7am to 6pm.
- Crechè (3 months to 1.5 years of age): Monday to Friday from 8am to 4:30pm
- We keep a portfolio folder to accompany each child in his or her personal development
- Drawings and photos of the child are collected alongside reports from the pedagogues
- We work according to a comprehensive child protection concept, looking at potential risk factors from the child's environment and from within the kindergarten.
Freshly prepared, seasonal food
Our food is freshly prepared every day. Children over 1 year receive breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. Additionally, fresh vegetables and fruits are freely available to the children all day. The menu varies with the seasons.
We believe that in this way, children will learn about the diversity of food items and develop a taste for fresh food. We can also accommodate special dietary requirements (e.g., vegetarian, kosher).
Daily exercise and sports
We are convinced that daily exercise and outdoor activities optimally promote the children's motor skills. Therefore, our daily schedules include the following:
- Weather permitting, we play outside in our garden or in parks, on playgrounds nearby and take the youngest children for a walk.
For sports activities, we have a cooperation with the Fachmittelschule in Maiselgasse 1, 1030 Vienna. There is a large, fully equipped gymnasium available for the children to practice gymnastics, climbing and ball sports. At the Maria-Jacobi-Gasse location, we also have a sports room available. This can be used at any time and also spontaneously.
STEM - Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Learning and discovery are designed to be exploratory, hands-on and joyful, so that even the youngest children develop an interest. We work with experiments of all kinds, small robots (Bee Bots), iPad, recording devices, theme cards, trips to the Vienna OpenLab and much more.
Bilingual education and handicraft
Elizabeth (Betsy) Higgins-Pösinger is an English native speaker, Montessori teacher, and master craftsman of carpentry.
Betsy has enriched our Kindergarten with her educational programs since its begining in 2010. These programs offer children a fun, multifaceted learning experience, blending great trust in their abilities with boundaries for them to move freely within. The English sessions combine an array of books, songs and games, with fun and interesting topics.
In `Carpentry´ the focus is on how objects can be constucted and repaired, with emphasis on the proper safe handling of tools. This builds the children‘s fine motor skills and self confidence, as well as technical thinking. In Yoga +English sessons the focus is on yoga (positions, concentration, fun, games, body awareness). These learning situations create an enviorment for the children to pick-up the language in a meaningful manner,
Carpentry with native speaker Betsy Higgins-Pösinger
Research at the VBCF Child Care Center
PEDAGOGICAL INFORMATION
"Living like a tree, single and free and brotherly like a forest, that is our longing". Nazim Hikmet
We consider our kindergarten to be an educational institution and we place a lot of importance on this. Our goal is to create learning opportunities while ensuring that the children feel completely comfortable and safe in their daily environment. Our focus is entirely on the child.
What we stand fo::
OUR VALUES - These include freedom, justice, equality, solidarity, peace, diversity. Every child is equally valuable.
OUR IMAGE OF THE CHILD - The child comes first. To encourage and demand this, so that the child can grow up self-confident and independent in an individual way.
OUR LANGUAGES - In our kindergarten, language is a very important part. We place a lot of emphasis on active speaking as well as playful introduction to foreign languages in the language-sensitive phase. In the last year of kindergarten, we focus more on German, so that the transition to school is easier for the children.
OUR CELEBRATIONS - Creating experiences together is an integral part of the kindergarten year. We celebrate various festivals with the children and also organize festivals together with the parents. Our Lantern Festival and Summer Festival are annual events with the parents that we do not want to miss.
OUR PARTNERSHIP - The educational partnership is very important to us. To treat each child individually, we need the right experts. As the parents, you are our most important contact persons. Only by working together can we provide the best possible support for your child.
We follow the principles of Montessori pedagogy. Children are accepted as they are; they are treated with respect and accompanied along their developmental paths in loving and caring ways. Children are helped to obtain individual independence – following the Montessori principle ‘Help me to do it myself’.
We embrace the national and cultural diversity of our children and acknowledge this in our daily work. Children’s activities are often group-overlapping, so that children can choose activities according to their developmental level.
Furthermore, we offer special activities depending on the child’s age:
Babies from the age of 3 months: Individual schedules to include breast feeding, nappy changing, and sleeping
Children from 1 year of age: More fixed daily routine with breakfast, morning circle, lunch, midday nap, afternoon activities
Children from 3 years of age: More fixed daily routine with two-phase learning concept of ‘research and discovery’
INFORMATION FOR PARENTS
All information on registration for the VBC Child Care Center is collected here.
All information on fees for the VBC Child Care Center is collected here.
In the nursery, we adhere to the rules of transparent communication to ensure that parents are well-informed about their child’s development. Every week you will receive an update with all relevant information via the parents app. Additionally, we offer various ways for parents to get involved:
- Celebrating festivals with parents
- Parents' evening: Presentation of plans for the new kindergarten year (during Sept/Oct each year)
- Parents' evenings on various topics
- Consultation hours with the kindergarten management: Every Tuesday from 09:00-10:00 in the VBC Cafeteria
- Parent app: communication with the respective pedagogue or the kindergarten management; weekly information by the kindergarten management
- Developmental discussions with the pedagogue (1x per year - period March to May)
- Discussions with the pedagogue on general topics (possible at any time by arrangement)
We see ourselves as partners of parents in the elementary education and care of their children. Thus, depending on parents’ needs, our pedagogues can offer various forms of counseling and support. For more information and support options, please visit the Wiener Kinderfreunde homepage.
The VBC Child Care Center is run by Wiener Kinderfreunde, a non-profit organization with approx. 2,500 employees. To find out more about the mission statement and available services, please visit www.kinderfreunde.at.