About us

Childspace was founded by wife and husband team Toni and Robin Christie. The first Childspace centre was opened on Valentine’s Day in 1994, and was situated in Christchurch at Toni and Robin's first home. Toni and Robin have two school-aged children, Max and Tui, who both attended Childspace centres throughout their early childhood.

Toni is the Director of Childspace Early Childhood Institute and holds a Masters degree in Education. She oversees the professional development programmes, personnel, and edits The Space magazine. Robin, with both an Early Childhood Education and Fine Arts background, is responsible for all the design and maintenance of the Childspace environments. As a team, Robin and Toni have presented seminars and workshops to both national and international audiences on the topics of environment design, management, leadership, early childhood education curriculum and programming, infants and toddlers and storytelling and science.

We believe that early childhood is the most significant stage of every person’s development and are driven to provide practical, relevant, natural and aesthetic resources and environments for all who play and work with very young children.