News & Events
April 2025
Before the end of Term 1 we had two Easter Morning Teas with Easter Egg Hunts in our garden and a variety of Easter craft on our tables for parents to create memorable gifts with their child. It was beautiful Autumn weather and the children managed to find a chocolate egg or two to have with their yummy hot cross buns.
March 2025
We have a new pizza oven in our backyard and decided to offer two pizza mornings this month for families to come in and make a pizza with their child. Our maintenance staff member, Steve kindly offered to cook the pizzas that the families had made using a yoghurt and flour dough base with cheese and tomato toppings. The pizzas were really yummy and everyone had a great time getting hands on cooking experience.
December 2024 Christmas Feast
Our final week of PreSchool 2024 and a chance to eat some yummy Dino Bites and hot chips and finish off our Christmas Feast with an ice cream for dessert and pulling a cracker with a friend. Just fun, fun, fun!
December 2024 PreSchool Graduation Evening
We had close to 200 family members join us on a beautiful sunny evening in the PreSchool garden for our annual graduation. All our graduates donned their hats and gowns and were presented with a photo and gift. We have 45 children preparing themselves for primary school in 2025 and we will be sad to say goodbye to them as we wish them all the very best for their future years at big school!
November 2024 Vocational Excellence Award
Narooma Rotary Club has awarded a Vocational Excellence Award to our Preschool recognising our initiative in developing an authentic local indigenous curriculum unit in association with the local Yuin community. This has been a huge undertaking with lots of discussion along the way about how we could best meet the Department of Education’s mandatory requirements of an indigenous unit but do it authentically with local relevance. We are thankful to our staff, particularly Kate Heffernan and we were able to involve wonderful resource people from our local Yuin community, especially Trish Ellis, Natalie Bateman and Eddie Moore. The unit tells traditional Yuin stories and incorporates the local Dhurga language, which thanks to Trish and her sister Kerry, our staff have been learning through TAFE. Children love beautiful things and the stunning artwork on the storyboards by Natalie and the wonderful artefacts made by Eddie are loved and respected by all our children, about one-third of whom are from Aboriginal families. The team created 20 basket trunks of unique storyboards, books, artefacts and other teaching materials which were then gifted to 20 other early childhood centres around the Eurobodalla. This programme was funded by a $100,000 grant from the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.
September 2024 Indigenous Literacy Day
Indigenous Literacy day is celebrated on 4 September 2024. This year's theme is 'Be a Proud Voice for Country'. Indigenous Literacy Day aims to advocate, promote and celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, stories and language. We shared with the children two stories; 'How the Starfish was created' and 'The Two Sisters; Toonkoo and Ngaaadi'. The children made their own starfish and created their own artwork to illustrate the stories.
August 2024 Language Program Launch
Language provides us with our identity and connects us to culture and to country. Three books by Aboriginal authors – Mad Magpie, The Toast Tree and A Home for Bilby – have long been popular with our children and we wanted to add five Dreamtime stories. In May 2023 we secured a $100,000 grant from the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts to develop a language program. We met with teachers Patricia Ellis OAM and Kerry Boyenga and their brother Waine Donovan who wrote the Dhurga Dictionary and Learners' Grammar Book and approached local Yuin artist Natalie Bateman to make storyboards to help tell the stories. Local Yuin craftsman, Eddie Moore and his daughters Ella and Alyssa Moore, the Gadhu Girls, made spears, boomerangs, coolamons and other artefacts for the children to see, touch, talk about and interact with and Narooma Men’s Shed made wooden animal shapes to help tell the stories. Talia Moreton-Stewart, one of our Yuin educators also made patterns which the Men’s Shed etched into the timber. All our educators completed Dhurga language classes through TAFE and are now confident teaching Dhurga to our PreSchool children.
Our development of a Dhurga language program has been a community affair and we were pleased to share the program with 20 other early learning services across the Eurobodalla shire with gifts of storyboards, artefacts, props and cultural tours. We celebrated the launch of the Narooma PreSchool Language Program on August 29th at Club Narooma with other childcare providers in the Eurobodalla with MP, Dr Michael Holland and the Eurobodalla Shire Mayor, Matthew Hatcher in attendance.
August 2024 Father's Day Evening BBQ
Just before Father's Day we held an evening BBQ for Dads, Grandpas and any significant males in our children's lives. We had a good attendance and the men had a great time with yarns beside the firepit in our lovely backyard and games galore with the children such as toy plane flying, parachutes and craft activities.
July 2024 NAIDOC Week
The theme of this year's NAIDOC week was 'Keep the fire burning! Blak, loud and proud.' We explored the concept of sharing and were able to have a fire in our backyard fire pit and share some damper among friends for morning tea. We were also privileged to welcome some Aboriginal dancers - Ngadjudad (Water Sisters) from Narooma High School to show us some traditional dancing which the children loved.
May 2024 Mother's Day Morning Tea
We had a lovely morning with all the significant ladies in our children’s lives. Mums and Grandmas enjoyed tea and scones with jam and cream and many excited children were keen to participate with the grown ups in activities which included potion making, painting, posy making and ring making so that everyone could go home with a gift.
18-24 March 2024 Harmony Week
Harmony Week is a time of cultural respect for all and this year the theme was ‘everyone belongs.’ We read the book, ‘A Hundred Thousand Welcomes’ by Mary Lee Donovan which taught the children about hospitality and acceptance and featured the word ‘welcome’ in more than 14 languages! The children also came up with phrases which they thought were relevant to Harmony Week such as ‘celebrating different people’, ‘using kind words’ and ‘accepting one another.’ Everyone had lots of fun using orange paint to make their hand prints on a giant canvas to show their shared friendship.
March 2024 Easter Morning Teas and Activities
This Easter we invited our families to come and enjoy a beautiful morning of Easter craft and learning experiences with the children in our wonderful garden setting with a plate of Hot Cross Buns to eat. The children were delighted to have so many family members come and join them at preschool. The mornings were a hive of activity, chatter and joy especially when the easter egg hunt was on, to the delight of the children and their family.
Dec 2023 Christmas Feast and Festivities
As our year draws to a close, we enjoy our annual Christmas Feast with the children. This is a time of celebration where the children get to choose how they want to feast and celebrate the Christmas Season together. They decide on the feast menu and the days play events, it is a time of great joy, fun and Christmas cheer.
Dec 2023 Graduation Evening
Our annual Graduation was held in our beautiful preschool grounds, this year the sun shone for us so families could enjoy the experience with their children in our shaded garden. Our graduates of 2023 have started their educational journey here with us and will now make their way into kindergarten. We have seen them grow not just physically, but in all areas of development ready to make the significant transition to school. We wish them and their families well as they move forward on this continued journey of education.
