MELALEUCA PARK KINDERGARTEN
SHARON DEVLIN - PRESCHOOL DIRECTOR
We’ve been very excited to be involved in this project and it’s been great to have staff and parents and children express excitement and talking about it with our governing council parents and they’ve all come on board and been really excited. They have lots of great ideas, we’ve set up displays about how our yard is currently and asking parents to give us feedback on what should we keep what would they like to see changed and we’ve also collected a whole heap of photographs to put a display of what a nature kindy could look like and the response to that has been overwhelming. Lots of parents with lots of great ideas, going away getting on google, Pinterest finding lots of information and bringing stuff back to us. So it’s been a whole collaborative approach with staff, families and children and collecting children’s voice. We’ve been out and about in the community taking children on little study tours looking at some of the nature scape play areas that Mt Gambier City Council are developing and exploring those areas and talking to children about what they liked in that space, what did they like to do in that space and we watched them and took lots of photographs and we’ve also recorded all our information on children’s voice mainly in a thinking talking floor book. There’s been a lot of sort of Aha! moments that we’ve thought we didn’t really think of that. We had quite a few children commenting on our fake grass which we spent a lot of time and energy into recreating a whole patch in our yard and putting artificial turf down and not really consulting with the children. We just went ahead and that was a process we went through and now getting the children’s voice when we’re asking them what would they like to change they’re saying they don’t like the fake grass. We allow children to climb trees and all of our trees in our yard are climbing trees and children love climbing and a lot of our yard currently hasn’t got opportunities for challenge. Parents have been really great talking about what they did as children and their childhood and saying well yeah I used to make mud pies if you have a mud kitchen that would be great. I want to come and play I know how to make mud pies and I’d love to come and do that.
SUZIE COTTLE – EARLY CHILDHOOD LEADER
In terms of the Early Childhood Leader’s role we look at how we can facilitate the conversations, build the partnerships and make sure that we are collecting many voices in this project. One of the I guess big outcomes of this project of connecting community is that we build and empower families in the local community to see Melaleuca as their place. That this is a community space as well as a school, kindergarten and community annexe so we want its ownership is really important for us. We want this to be the jewel of the crown that people want to be here, want to access our programs and also feel incredibly welcome. But also how this might springboard other projects in the community where the Mt Gambier City Council may take on for example Melaleuca reserve down the road so we’re bringing our learning with the council and other projects to this and then how it’s going to springboard to the benefit of the greater community from this project and how really children and families better connect with nature education but their own learning and be seen as competent. One of the key objectives of this project is schools as community hubs which is fabulous for this community because this outdoor learning space or community space will provide opportunities for families perhaps don’t exist in this area. Many of our families do not have transport so Melaleuca outdoor learning space will be accessed on the weekend and in our plan we are constructing opportunities for people to come here and have a pic-nic, come and have a barbeque and so we are going to work with the community about how to manage this space, look after this space, keep this space safe so ownership is really important so we achieve those goals. In our planning also we want to actually look at challenge and risk with natural play spaces, we want to look at growing food for learning and for cooking.
FIONA PULFORD – COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR
My role isn’t just to do community development work in the four walls of our centre it really is to provide support across the whole community and so bringing those people in as players to this project is another part of how I can add some value to what will be happening here at Melaleuca. Better together is another key principle that we’ll be working with as part of this project which is obviously really close to community engagement principles which is what we are doing already and it really is about making sure that we have genuine engagement with our families it’s not seen as tokenistic we really care about this community and we want to see them have a really strong voice and ownership over the entire project. We really want this to be a way to connect the families locally to each other and grow this community so then we can broaden that out so they can actually see themselves as being part of the entire community.
MICHAEL SILVY – MANAGER REGULATORY SERVICES. MT GAMBIER COUNCIL
I think over the last couple of years council has had a strong focus on community engagement and projects like that and nature play is one of those areas that we are really trying to delve into. I think it’s still evolving as an opportunity for kids to get out and play. Getting the message out there and making it become the norm and then help us to promote what we’re doing in the community space. This project the timing of it is really good because we’ve actually had kids from Melaleuca school come to some of those and Rutherlands is one. Walk through the site, use the site and I’ve sat back and watched the way the kids have used the space, picked up on ideas, created new ones. One of the challenges with these spaces is to keep them active and keep them vibrant and have enough things in there to keep kids engaged and it is a real transformation in terms of the way parents look at risk.
SHARON DEVLIN - PRESCHOOL DIRECTOR
As educators we’ve found a big difference in coming out here in the morning and we bring the children out and we look at what we’re putting back into this space and we’re really educating the children and as staff ourselves really thinking about let’s put tools back in here for children to use. It’s just been wonderful we’re not dragging loads of stuff out and loads of stuff in and children are being selective. The log climbing structure out the back is great and it gives kids a challenge, they can take risks and it can be anything they want it to be in their imagination. It can be a pirate ship one day, it can be a boat, it can be a cubby house, it can be whatever so it opens itself to lots of different play. A group of children have been really fascinated with the fossils in the limestone, so they’ve been using little paint brushes and tools and tapping away at the limestone and finding fossils and shells and it’s just really opened up lots of possibilities for learning and where do we take them and what can we learn from this. As far as building a stronger community throughout this whole process we’ve made lots of really strong connections with people in the community like the Mt Gambier City Council, local Boandik elders and people from the community, people from the Mt Gambier Children’s Centre and other areas and even Melaleuca School like it’s a share learning space and we’ve got residents from the nursing home and they bring their people over for a walk around and a look around and they’ve just been amazed at what’s here and how its changed so it’s great to have those people in the community both young and old involved and from different places in the community.
BARBARA GLEED – TEACHER
The new outdoor learning space is just fabulous and it’s really exciting the potential and the options that children have for learning here. Some new things that we’ve noticed is that the running, just the running for running sake has stopped and slowed down and some of those children have found some areas in the yard to stop and engage in learning and not just run. We’re amazed to see the reaction the children had an example of children seeing it different to adults the mound where the slide is we thought the rope and the stepping boards would be really popular but no children would rather go up the slippery slopey slide where there’s more risk involved actually.
Our staff and the primary school and kindergarten are now doing professional learning together in place of pedagogies and we’ve also started to open up the space over here for the community to be able to bring their kids into this space as well so stuck a door in a building which doesn’t sound like much but the door is huge because the door means that everyone is connected now so if you come to use the community space through a playgroup or you come to the kindy as a parent or you come to the junior primary to listen to your kids read we’re all connected. We’re all a part of the same learning community and we want to engage parents from the very beginning.
STACEY TURLEY - PARENT
Having the involvement of parents and teachers and the community actually has made it so much better. There’s more ideas that were sort of thrown into the mix to get a better result at the end of the day so I think it couldn’t have been what it is without the involvement of the community,