Much to the delight of the children, the first stage of construction involved the demolition yesterday of the old building.
Decked out in hard-hats and raincoats, they cheered from their temporary home at Green Island School as a digger tore the kindergarten down.
Dunedin Kindergarten Association manager Christine Gale said the kindergarten had been using a double classroom at the school for the past two weeks.
Support had been "fantastic".
Pupils who used the class had moved to other rooms, she said.
The original kindergarten was built in 1978 and was only intended to be temporary.
Now, after years of fundraising and plenty of community support, a new purpose-built kindergarten should be complete by about the end of this year.
Octa director Dave Booth said the $700,000 project, carried out by Stewart Construction, would involve building a larger kindergarten to accommodate more children, and flattening the section to make it more child-friendly.
