Come January 2024, all our Presbyterian Preschools will be transformed into Little Olive Tree (LOT) Preschools instead.
But who is Little Olive Tree? What meaning does “olive tree” hold? What does this mean for us moving forward?
Why Little Olive Tree?
In the Bible, the flowering olive tree represents beauty, abundance and fruitfulness.
“But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.” Psalm 52:8
Our hope is that Little Olive Tree Preschools will provide a safe space for our children to grow and flourish in.
The process of making olive oil from the olive fruit is also a tedious one – it requires repeated processes of bruising the fruits, pressing, heating and further pressing. Such an image humbly reminds us that nurturing children is a labour of love which requires much faithfulness and patience, but produces fruits that are sweet. It also mirrors our dedication and perseverance as we journey with our children and their families. We hope that as our children grow up, they will always be rooted in the lessons and values we impart to them while they are with us. The birth of Little Olive Tree Little Olive Tree by Presbyterian Preschool Services (PPS) first sprouted in 2023 as a partnership with churches who shared our desire to meet the increasing needs of families while extending God’s love to the community.
As there is an increasing demand for full-day childcare, we started by converting 3 kindergartens located in churches into childcare centres – LOT Bukit Arang, LOT Woodlands and LOT Bethany, as partnerships with Bethesda Church Bukit Arang, Woodlands Evangelical Free Church with Truth Baptist Church, and Bethany Presbyterian Church respectively.
What’s Next for Little Olive Tree? PPS has been running childcare services for the past 50 years, previously under the name of Presbyterian Community Services (PCS). As part of ECDA's requirements for the Partner Operator Scheme, PPS was incorporated on 17 August 2021 and started operating separately from PCS. Despite these changes, PPS has remained faithful to our commitment to provide quality care and education to our children, and we have striven to transform our programmes over the past 2 years.
Little Olive Tree is a testament to our desire and passion to help the Christian Preschool Ministry flourish, and a renewed promise to our children and parents to continue improving our curriculum and services. Thus, it is a natural progression for our Presbyterian Preschools to be rebranded as Little Olive Tree Preschools, as we press on in being worthy partners that teach and love the children as our own. This will bring our total number of Little Olive Tree Preschools to 16. Come 2024, we will continue to run the same Truth, Beauty and Goodness curriculum that has been administered across both Preschools in 2023, and LOT will still be supported by the same, committed PPS team.
We also look forward to more partnerships with churches and expanding our preschool services to more areas in Singapore.
In the upcoming months, our staff, children and parents will all be involved in a series of activities to get to know Little Olive Tree a little better and embrace this new identity! All children will also be donning our new LOT uniforms. We hope that you are as excited as we are, as we open this new chapter together, with God’s blessing and favour.