When You're Four

Before Woodleigh’s littlest learners arrive at Penbank’s Early Childhood Centre in Moorooduc, the room is alive and waiting for them. If it's cold, the fire is burning, the lamps are glowing and there are books, blankets and cosy nooks with soft music. New work has appeared on the walls overnight and freshly cleaned paintbrushes sit in jars. None of it is haphazard. Everything is deliberate.

For Julia Swayn, a Reggio Emilia-trained educator, and her team, Mary and Hang, morning preparation isn't just about making a beautiful room, though it is. It is about respect: for the children, for the process, and for everyone who belongs in this space for a whole year. Because a year is a lifetime when you’re four.

Julia, Mary and Hang greet families as they come in. Soon everyone gathers in a circle on the mat, knee to knee, giggling, yawning and chatting. Nobody stands at the front and nobody is squeezed to the back, 'because we’re equal', Julia says. Those first mornings are when they talk about their Essential Agreement, a living record in their own words, not a tidied-up adult version. It hangs at a four-year-old’s eye level because that’s who it’s for: documentation, not decoration.

There was long an assumption that breadth mattered more than depth: tractors this week, colours next week, outer space the week after. Julia sees it differently: an interest might last a week, or six months. A fascination with marble runs began indoors and stretched out into the yard, where PVC pipe, loose parts and old go-kart tyres let them test ideas on a giant scale. As far as they’re concerned, they’re having the time of their lives, without a care for the incredible cognitive work unfolding in the background.

At the beginning of the year, each child chooses a walking stick for Bush Kinder. Not a piddly little twig, something with guts. Adventure after adventure, wool and grass are tied on, gumnuts and beads stuck on, and stories attach themselves. Like a diary, just not on paper. When they graduate as giant, almost-five-year-olds, the sticks go home with them, carrying a year's worth of looking after each other, looking after nature and being kind. Their own words, agreed when they first sat knee to knee. Because we’re equal.