St Nick's Early Education takes a NAIDOC week excursion

The children of Mowane Room at St Nick's at Newcastle West attended the NAIDOC Week community day held at Newcastle foreshore. NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life.

As we boarded the bus for the excursion, the children could barely contain their excitement as they all safely clicked in their seatbelts! We could easily be seen a mile away as we were all wearing our bright safety vests! As we were driving along in the bus, the children were noticing all the changes in our city, especially along Honeysuckle Drive. So many cranes, diggers and workers, wearing their hi vis vests, ‘just like us!’

As we arrived at the community day, we were excited by what we saw and heard ‒ lots of people, market stalls and music! We walked around together, taking in all the sights along the way. We made our way to the Awabakal tent, where we saw some familiar faces from our friends at Awabakal Preschool. Here we played with some beautiful playdough with an array of natural bush resources.

Following this we continued our walk, which led us to a tent where we could play with clay! We were also able to do some puzzles and meet a few Australian animal puppet friends.

We were feeling hungry by this time, so we walked across the small bridge over the pond to a lovely grassy area to have our packed lunch. We sat and ate and chatted away in the beautiful sunshine. We then played in the park on the equipment for a while.

On the way back to the bus, we heard some digeridoos playing and saw lots more people. We were lucky enough to be given a box full of the beautiful playdough from our friends at Awabakal Preschool. The bus trip back was just as fun! We sang ‘wheels on the bus’ to the bus driver (he said he loved our singing, and no one had ever sung him that song before!) as he drove us through King Edward Park to see if we were lucky enough to see any whales (not this time) but loved looking at all the big waves at the beach.

We had some very tired little eyes as we arrived back to St Nicholas, and we all had some afternoon tea and then a much needed rest. We had a wonderful time being out and about in our wonderful community!

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Kate Berry Image
Kate Berry

Kate Berry is the Educational Leader and Early Childhood Teacher at St Nicholas, Newcastle West.