This year, we have embraced our collective journey towards healing and unity within Australia. The children have demonstrated their commitment by adding their distinctive handprints to our communal display tree. Each afternoon, our program has featured a game from the Yulunga Traditional Indigenous Games collection. We’ve delved into and celebrated Aboriginal Dreamtime narratives, exploring a variety of excellent tales from the Scholastic series in each session. We’ve also introduced Isaiah Firebrace’s exquisite work, Come Together, to our library—a resource that offers profound insights and captivating visuals for the children’s delight. Additionally, the Mulganai book has enriched our program with its enchanting artwork and the stories they convey, allowing us to provide the children with their own copies to cherish.

Each day after school children were given an opportubity to express their ideas about what they can do to ensure they treat everyone fairly and equally to create a safe and welcoming environment.  Childrens voice will get written on the Rainbow Serpent. 

• We have been sharing some wonderful stories for National Reconciliation Week.
• We have been looking at a wide range of Indigenous Symbols that are used for Storytelling
• The children joined the St Mary’s Primary School on Wednesday to hear a story told by the Mystery Reader reflecting National Reconciliation Week
• St Mary’s Kindy, St Mary’s Primary and Assumption College students came together on Wednesday 29 May to walk from their schools and join together in unity for a National Reconciliation Walk.  All three Campuses combined to continue on to St Mary’s Catholic Church to participate in a special Liturgy officiated by Fr Franco at 2:00pm and this include Songs, Prayer, Aboriginal Our Father and some symbolic items.

• We have made our whole after school program about play and connecting to Country this week, by introducing our children to the First Nations version of their favourite games from Yulunga
• We made a yarning stick as a group this afternoon with each child adding a piece of decoration on the stick with us for us to use as a service going forward
• On Wednesday we spent the afternoon connecting with Country, by having a yarning circle on the oval so we can sit barefoot on the grass and talk about what reconciliation means to the children and do a group Acknowledgement of Country
• We have incorporated some dreams time stories for the children to explore through puppets and visual aids in our First Nations area and to watch in the BSC and ASC sessions
• We have created an Aboriginal flag display in our service that the children created together with their handprints, this has been added to our Reconciliation week display
• We did nature crafts in the way of the First Nations People by doing dot paintings on leaves to be added to our Indigenous area
• We made our own boomerangs, and one of our Aboriginal children will be teaching us how to throw them

At St Anthony's, this week for Reconciliation Week, we are taking it to the children to find out what they know about Reconciliation Week and encourage the children to write or draw this down in our book " A Little Book for Thinking" that sits in our Indigenous area. Along with this, we are looking at the theme of Sea of Hearts as we believe reconciliation must live in our hearts, minds, and actions of all Australians as we move forward to strengthen our relationships within the wider community and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Our sea of hearts will be displayed around the OSHC.

Our Lady of Lourdes OSHC, Toowoomba

Our main activity was borrowing library resources throughout the week to allow the children to engage and play with traditional Indigenous musical instruments, games, and more. We also had staff donate native plants and flowers that we learnt about. The children then suggested we arrange the flowers for loved ones and so children made bouquets and baskets to share with their families. 

Reconciliation Week 2024

Our mural Is often a topic of conversation when we sit in our yarning circle at the end of outside play time.  We decided to make a combined Group A and B mural.

We read stories, watched an Australia Zoo clip about echidnas, and made our own echidnas.

We watched aboriginal Emu and Kangaroo dancing on youtube.  We tried the dances and making music with the clap sticks.

We learnt the Torres Straight children’s song Taba Naba.