Dear Families,

Our exciting baby news continues with Mrs Hartigan and her husband Jeremy welcoming a beautiful baby boy, Alby Rod. We wish them all the very best as they embark on this amazing journey called parenthood and we can't wait to meet Alby.

On June 11 the first ever International Day of Play was celebrated. A very famous educator and researcher named Maria Montessori said, ''Play is the work of the child.''

I often think we underestimate the learning that happens when children are allowed to play. Think about your childhood, what do you remember most? How many opportunities for play did you have?

Children don't always need packed schedules to grow and learn. Some downtime and the freedom to explore through play are crucial.

Our children have one childhood. Let's protect it in every way we can. Step back and watch your children play, listen to them, question them, see the world through their eyes, embrace their sense of wonder and awe, and be playful with them. In so many ways our children are our greatest teachers.

I'm so proud of the work our educators do to ensure our children have opportunities to explore through play, investigation, and discovery.

The following poem by Loris Malaguzzi may offer some insight regarding play, imagination, and young people and how young people may express their spirituality and possibly experience the presence of God in their lived experience.

100 Languages

The child is made of one hundred.

The child has a hundred languages

a hundred hands

a hundred thoughts

a hundred ways of thinking

of playing, of speaking.

A hundred always a hundred

ways of listening,

of marvelling of loving

a hundred joys

for singing and understanding

a hundred worlds

to discover

a hundred worlds

to invent

a hundred worlds

to dream.

The child has a hundred languages

(and a hundred hundred hundred more)

but they steal ninety-nine.

The school and the culture

separate the head from the body.

They tell the child:

to think without hands,

to do without head

to listen and not to speak

to understand without joy

to love and to marvel

only at Easter and Christmas.

They tell the child:

to discover the world already there

and of the hundred they steal ninety-nine.

They tell the child:

that work and play

reality and fantasy

science and imagination

sky and earth

reason and dream

are things

that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child that the hundred is not there.

The child says:

No way.

The hundred is there.

- Loris Malaguzzi

Wishing you all a play-filled weekend.

Louise

Phonics Media Release