Choklits Annual Letter 2025
Hello Choklits Community,
Each year, between Christmas Day and January 1st, we take time to reflect on our year at Choklits and pen our Annual Letter. That’s us above, Choklits Owners Jade and Matt, along with our twins, Abigail and Hubert.
Choklits is a family business, and along with our fabulous team we own and operate Choklits ourselves. Both Abigail and Hubert attended Choklits long before they became confident primary schoolers with leadership roles for Grade 6. We live and we breathe Choklits, our children will probably tell you we take it a little too seriously, and we definitely talk about it way too much!
We believe progress is happiness which is probably why we enjoy this, nothing makes us smile more than helping our team grow, develop and seeing the impact they have for all the children who come to Choklits.
This year was especially challenging for early childhood education due to broader industry factors. Despite the challenges, we are grateful for the way our community stayed connected and supportive, and for their understanding through it all.
Leading Choklits is a great privilege and we thank you for being part of our community. We are very proud of the entire Choklits Team and everything they have achieved in 2025.
We certainly had an action packed year…
Community and connection
As we know children learn through real experiences and connections with their world, some beautiful community moments we shared include our team facilitating several excursions almost every week, including Arcare visits, Bush Kinder, Kew Traffic School. We had over 600 incursions and our very first cross service group excursion where our kindergarten classes all came together and visited Chesterfield Farm. It was an amazing experience for everyone, including ourselves.
We had several visits from Allied Health Professionals and Dr Rob visited us every week to help both our team and children stay in tiptop shape.
A particular highlight for us was hosting international visitors at Choklits Surrey Hills, where Abby and Zac led an impressive curriculum presentation in Mandarin for eight visiting educators from China. This moment reflected both the strength of our program and the confidence of our educators in articulating practice at a global level.
To date, six students from China have participated in and experienced our curriculum firsthand. More recently, principals from Chinese schools visited Choklits Surrey Hills to observe and review the high-quality practice embedded within our program. Their feedback recognised the outstanding work of the Surrey Hills team and the strength of our pedagogical approach.
Notably, this international interest has grown organically through the advocacy of our existing families, who shared their positive experiences of the Choklits program within their global networks. This speaks to the trust, reputation, and impact of our work within the community.
As a result of these connections, we have been invited to Shenzhen in 2026 to further share and showcase our curriculum and approach. This is an opportunity we are greatly looking forward to.
Thanks to the dedication and professionalism of our team, Choklits has come a long way over the past 10 years, and this milestone stands as a powerful reflection of the quality, commitment, and vision that continues to drive our organisation forward.
Team and culture
One of our key strategic priorities this year was strengthening cross-service collaboration. Under the leadership of our Area Manager, Deb Prelorenzo, educators were supported to work collaboratively across locations to share expertise, reflect on practice, and lift quality consistently across the group.
A strong example of this has been the work of our room teams. Each team engaged in structured visits to all services, observing practice, exchanging ideas, and building a shared understanding of high-quality pedagogy. This ensured that every educator had the opportunity to contribute, learn, and grow through professional dialogue and collective practice.
We also welcomed a number of new team members to the Choklits family throughout the year. Their willingness to engage, build strong relationships, and actively contribute to our collaborative culture has further strengthened our learning community.
Looking ahead to 2026, Deb’s focus will be on deepening this collaboration through more intentional professional learning, strengthening reflective practice, and embedding consistent leadership rhythms across services. This will support sustainable improvement, shared accountability, and continued growth in educator capability and service quality.
Learning and programs
Learning sat at the centre of everything we did. Across the year, we supported children to build confidence, wellbeing, thinking and communication, in line with the Early Years Learning Framework.
A highlight for 2025 was the introduction of our Wellbeing, and Physical Educational Programs which are only available at Choklits. These programs were created from within our team and led by educators who bring passion and skill to their craft:
- Choklits Activate with Emily
- Messy Play with Asten
- Yoga with Tanaya
- Judo with Zac
- Phonics with Chia
- Piano with Regina
- Auslan with Sophie and Philippa
The additional programs we offer in addition to the standard curriculum continue to be one of the main reasons families choose Choklits.
Spaces and improvements
We completed the Ringwood playground upgrade. It remains one of Melbourne’s biggest outdoor child care play areas, and we love seeing children use it for movement, exploration, nature play and group games.
We are still finalising facility plans for each service in 2026 with our Maintenance Manager Dominic, but the consistent improvement and upgrades theme will continue throughout the year.
Choklits Awards and celebrations
Our end of year celebrations team decided we should extend our awards beyond just tenure this year, and we agreed. We went to our community and the votes came in fast!
A huge thank you to our incredible parent community. Across our services we received over 300 votes for our team. Even more special, every single team member received at least one vote.
As owners, we are so proud of this incredible group of humans who pour so much into the children and the Choklits community every day.
Here’s a recap of our winners-
Choklits Champion (voted by the Choklits Team)
Educator Award (voted by parents)
Emerging Leader Award (voted by the leadership team)
Tenure Awards
One of the things we are most proud of at Choklits is our team tenure. In an industry known for high turnover, we feel privileged to have educators who choose to grow their careers with us, year after year. At Choklits Ringwood, we now have 10 current team members who have been with us for 5+ years, with some heading quickly towards 10 years!
In 2025, we proudly presented four 5-year Tenure Awards to:
We always say that Choklits is special because of our people: children, families and the team.
The Chokliteers Go To School
And the year would not be complete without a visit from Santa with a sack of books for all our children. The Chokliteers Get Ready for School was a big hit and the 8th book we have produced, the 6th in the Chokliteers series. The book was authored by Matt and illustrated by David Brewer and designed to demonstrate how we support children at Choklits with routines, confidence and transition-to-school readiness.
The world may be going more digital but our love of all things literacy remains strong, we believe books are an essential part of childhood and we feel it’s important we do our part.
Looking ahead to 2026
We are excited to build on our strong foundations and focus on continued growth and innovation across Choklits. Key priorities include:
- Extending and refining Choklits programs to ensure they remain responsive, high-quality, and aligned with the needs of children, families, and educators.
- Strengthening cross-service collaboration to create meaningful professional development pathways, shared leadership opportunities, and consistent practice across all services.
- Rebuilding our website to better support families through clearer communication, improved accessibility, and enhanced engagement with our programs.
- Further developing the Choklits Academy to enable faster onboarding, targeted upskilling, and consistent professional learning for teams at all levels.
- Deepening leadership capability and reflective practice across services to support sustainable improvement and future growth.
- Continuing to share our thinking and practice beyond Choklits, including the possibility of writing another book, topic suggestions are always welcome, with this year’s idea proudly coming from our community.
With a clear vision and a strong, connected team, 2026 promises to be an exciting year of growth, learning, and opportunity.
Big thanks!
We obviously couldn’t deliver our service without our amazing team across our locations. Our Area Manager Deb Prelorenzo has flourished in her role and provided all our Directors with great support, mentorship and guidance throughout the year.
Our Directors, Savannah at Croydon, Zac and Surrey Hills and both Janine and Jenny at Ringwood, deal with more than anyone sees (or gives them credit for) on a daily basis and we are super proud of them all and the teams they’ve built.
Our team has grown to over 120 and each of them plays a vital role for Choklits families. It’s all the times they go above and beyond that makes Choklits, Choklits. We especially thank them for each and every time they put their own needs aside because a child, a parent or another one of our team needed them. You guys truly are the best!
Thank you all for being part of Choklits. Whether you have been with us for years or you joined us in 2025, we are grateful for your trust and support. We’re looking forward to 2026, it’s going to be our best year yet!
Enjoy the holiday period, we know you deserve it!
Learning is Everywhere!
Choklits Owners
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Previous year’s letters-
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