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Highlands EduCare Children's Centre occupies a 4,000 square foot, two-storey residential duplex at 870 Francis Avenue in Kelowna. The Centre is only a few city blocks from, and in between, Kelowna General Hospital and Okanagan College.
Both sides of the duplex are connected, creating open space to move around. The residential nature of the interior and the warm wood appearance of the floor provides a comfortable, relaxed, homey feeling for children and staff.
The second floor is devoted to McBean's DayCare and McDuff's PlayCare programs. Here you can find the "Castle", a playhouse for the creative minded. Over in the northeast corner, Pumba the guinea pig and Perdida the bunny are comforted by the attention provided by the children. And, of course, there is the nap room in the quiet area for those who want or need a rest from the activity.
The main floor is home for McArthur's Junior Kindergarten program during the morning and McBuff's After School program in the afternoon. The rooms are filled with shelves containing an array of toys, games, figurines, animals, art supplies, crafts, books, and dress up clothes. The east side garage contains enough toys and supplies to suit every season, and ensure
sufficient rotation to prevent boredom.
The main floor opens to a large concrete patio that sees it's share of sidewalk chalk. The patio is equipped with two large awnings extending from the sundeck and overhead mist system for those perfect summer days. Underneath the sundeck is the "stage",
a colorful puzzle piece raised floor for those with a dramatic flair.
The patio borders a large fenced arena that is used for both riding (on a wide variety of tricycles, scooters and other child friendly vehicles) and for games (equipped with nets for hockey, socccer, and basketball).
Adjacent to the arena is a large adventure playground ($30,000.00 worth) with two different slides, a tunnel, three different climbers, and a bridge (complete with pretend trolls). As you can see, the playground produces pumpkins for all from "magic pumpkin seeds" during hallowe'en. And, of course, the sandboxes, complete with gazebo style roof for protection against rain and sun.
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