Laidley Kindergarten and Withcott Early Education Centre

"Bush to Beach, Bush to Beach, Bush to Beach? What can I tell to young children that will be bush to beach?

I know I'll start with 'The Little Blue Train Takes the Children to the Beach'. That'll be good."

I like using my little blue train series as warm up stories with young audiences because they are such good participation stories and are relatively simple. They let me get a feel for the audience and decide what level to pitch the next story at.

I threw in some more beach animals than normal as well. Usually when one of the children brings back the bucket of water to put around the sandcastle there's just a crab in it but this time there was - 'something with a tail, something with nippers and something with tentacles'. The Laidley preprepers guessed them all. I think I'll keep them in future tellings although I might change the octopus to 'something with a shell on its back'.

After 'Little Blue Train' I did a bush story - 'Kookaburra Sits on the Old Gum Tree'. I love it. It's got a lot built into it. I forgot to put in the sounds of the cicadas and frogs but they did get Kookaburra, Goanna and Wombat and a bush fire. Kookaburra and Wombat both have roles in saving people from the bush fire and I get to put in the 'Stop, Drop and Roll' message.  'Do you remember what Kookaburra said to Wombat?  Stop, Drop and Roll'.

I knew that Laidley Kinder got flooded during the New Year floods. They had water up to the windows flowing through the old church building. So I was interested to see if the flood would come out in the story we created together. It didn't till afterwards when the children were drawing pictures for our story. A girl drew a picture called 'It all got flooded'.

The story we created was called 'The Old Man and the Yabbies'. It was about an old man who was so dirty that when his bathwater ran into the creek it made the Yabbies sick. The kindy kids had to rescue them and return them to the creek. One bonus of the story is that Kaori now knows what yabbies eat.

Loved the drive from Laidley to Withcott via Gatton and Grantham. One the one hand it was a great to see how fertile and productive the floodplain section of the catchment is and, on the other, just how destructive the floods had been. One has to admire the resilience of the local community.

At Withcott Early Education Centre the audience was quiet young so 'Little Blue Train' had another run. I was tempted to do 'Little Blue Train Goes to the Zoo' but that normally has the train having to stop because the train bridge has been broken by a flood and I thought that might be a bit close to the bone for them. We went to the beach again.

'Mary Had a Little Lamb' was story number two. Kids normally love the lamb because it is naughty and demanding and gets into trouble like 'rolling down the hill into the duck pond.' This time I added some extra pond detail.

The lamb was rescued by Mary and, when it shook the water off, itaid, "Maaaaaaaaa, thank you Maaaaaaaary." Mary said, "Lamby, you look funny. You've got duck weed all over you." The lamb said, "Yaaaaaaaaas and I've got a tadpole in my ear as well."

It's not surprising that the story we created at Withcott was a pond or creek story. It was a sequence of animals scaring each other and hiding. I took some liberties with the Lockyer catchment and allowed a crocodile. It was great helping the children draw some pictures at the end.

And now, after a sandwich and a coffee I'm at the Gatton Library next to Lake Apex posting this post.

Daryll