Paving the way for Positive Early Childhood Education

LAST Wednesday night, the Yellow Cottage Preschool and Where There’s a Will joined forces, welcoming 70 Early Childhood Educators from the Upper Hunter to the Cottage and Scone Grammar School to share their experience of Strength Stars in action.

Kirsty Hails, Director of The Yellow Cottage worked with professor Lea Waters in 2019 to create a Strength Stars programme for preschool aged children, one of the first positive education programmes around the world designed for this age group.

Following this, the Yellow Cottage team of Educators have deliberately implemented Strength Stars into their daily routine.

The Yellow Cottage team and Where There’s a Will wanted to share with other Early Childhood Educators, just how easy it is to draw this into daily activities at Preschools and Childcare Centres.

The Yellow Cottage and Where There’s a Will welcomed Early Childhood Educators from the Upper Hunter to share their experience of Strength Stars in action.

Scone Grammar School Principal, Paul Smart said Strength Stars form part of our Grammar Cares programme, the programme is about caring for the individual and nurturing wellbeing within our preschool and school community.

“Our Christian foundation also encourages us to serve and share with our community, we are pleased that Ms Hails and the team at The Yellow Cottage have been able to share these practices,” Mr Smart said.

“My understanding was the night was very successful because we had a large number of Early Childhood educators from the Upper Hunter and wider areas, who were able to attend to speak from their knowledge from their Strength work,” he said.

“The work of Kirsty and the team has been delightful to watch because they are so passionate about how they can work and engage our youngest in understanding themselves and growing in their learning space,” he said.

“It falls into the whole big picture of the schools aim to see wellbeing and learning bundled together is important for young people, it is really critical and positive to see at a young age,” said Mr Smart. 

Ms Hails said, it was a strong, positive response from the early learning community and yet another example of Where There’s a Will pulling all sectors together for the wellbeing of children.

“Strength Stars are part of our everyday, we wanted to share the ease of this with other educators,” said Ms Hails.

Founder of Where There’s a Will, Pauline Carrigan is encouraging people to share what is working is one of the first steps towards the long-term vision for our foundation to build wellbeing through positive education in the Upper Hunter.

“We are moving into a new era of people in our community training other people in our community, the knowledge and expertise is right here in the Upper hunter so let’s share it and learn from it,” said Ms Carrigan.