MARY BAILEY HOUSE – BABIES TO SIX-YEAR OLDS
Honouring and empowering our youngest children
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ary Bailey House is the College’s Early Education Centre for babies from six weeks old up to children aged six. Our Mission is to honour children and empower them to express their voice and rights. We make this possible by acknowledging and valuing the uniqueness of every child and fostering a community of learners within each playroom. In 2021 we readily observed children of all ages discussing and working together to imagine, create, solve and resolve matters important to them in play. During Sydney’s lockdown we had to imagine, create, solve and resolve ways to sustain a community of learners with children learning at home. In Cradle Mountain (six-weeks-old babies to two-year-olds) and Lilly Pilly Gully (two- to three-year-olds)
we made this possible by sharing with children at home what the children at the centre had been doing through images and film. We invited the children at home to do the same. We arranged virtual meetings so that friends could connect. These occasions were always full of joy as children smiled, laughed, waved and chatted with one another. We celebrated Book Week with the virtual telling of the story Tiddalik the Frog and Aboriginal Children’s Day through the shared viewing of ABC Play School: Walking Together episode. We acknowledged Father’s Day by creating a film in which children at home and the centre told their dads how much they loved them (with some help from their mums). In Daintree Rainforest (three- to six-year-olds) we provided families with information sheets and links to
online experiences for preschoolers learning from home. Parents shared stories and images of their children learning and our teachers and educators reciprocated by posting their daily escapades on the College’s community portal, Veritas Online. We continued to include the children at home in the playroom project on sustainability by inviting them to share their theories through drawing. We conducted literacy sessions online and our focus teachers and educators remained connected with their children, and their children with one another, through email and virtual meetings. After National Reconciliation Week we created a video about respecting and caring for Mother Earth. JACKIE BAXTER Mary Bailey House Director
ENCOMPASS 2021
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