Meet Yu-Chuan (Finley)

Finley is originally from Taiwan and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chinese Literature. Her professional journey began as a Chinese teacher and university journalist, experiences that helped shape strong communication skills and a deep appreciation for storytelling and culture.

Finley is also a Diploma-qualified early childhood educator and has proudly worked as an Educational Leader for the past four years. In 2025, she was honoured to be recognised as the ACT winner of Educational Leader.

With a culturally diverse background, Finley is passionate about fostering a respectful, inclusive, and welcoming environment, both within the service and across the wider community. At Winyu, she thoughtfully embeds a combination of educational theories into daily practice, striving to deliver high-quality education guided by a strong and meaningful philosophy.

Finley strongly believes that “The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind” (Maria Montessori), and that the work educators do matters deeply, as the way children are supported today shapes the world of tomorrow. This belief guides Finley’s leadership, practice, and commitment to creating environments where every child feels valued, capable, and inspired to thrive.

At Winyu, we have a spacious, open-plan setting with state-of-the-art facilities. Our outdoor environments include a beautiful and sustainable nature-based playground design. The exciting features of our outdoor environment include many green plants, bamboo bushes, vegetable gardens, an under-cover sandpit, reused tyres, repurposed timber climbing frame, slide and garden kitchen.

Our indoor environment and resources support inclusive play. Each area is carefully thought out to promote children’s independence in their play.

For example, the ‘practical life’ corner in each room is arranged to promote a sense of connection between the home and educational setting. It is open for children’s imagination to engage in pretend play and explore their social skills. Our programs cater to children aged 0–2 years, 2–3 years, and 3–5 years, with each room thoughtfully designed to support the developmental stage of the children within it.

We are a multicultural centre and respect diverse cultural backgrounds, beliefs, traditions, practices and perspectives. Our educators bring their valuable cultural knowledge and skills that enrich our learning environment.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past, present and future by singing our Acknowledgement of Country song with children in our yarning circle before mealtimes. We are thankful to have had the opportunity to enjoy our time here with our colleagues, children, families and community members, and will continue to embrace the beauty of diverse cultures.

Winyu is unique in that we provide mixed-aged playtime every day where all children get to freely explore other room environments, play with different resources and engage with educators who do not predominantly work in their room.

Mixed-age learning and play has significant benefits for children. It allows siblings to interact and gives children opportunities to play and learn from those outside their age group. Older children develop supporting and nurturing behaviours, while the younger ones learn social skills and language, and develop further confidence.

Our flexible learning environments and mixed-aged practices are inspired by leading international early childhood education research and innovation. We design our routines and curriculum with consideration to family practices at home, supporting each child’s individual routine and needs throughout the day.