Director of Mary Bailey House

Early Learning Matters Week from 5 to 9 August

Early learning plays a significant role in laying the foundation for future school success. Organised by Early Childhood Australia, the Early Learning Matters Week aimed at celebrating and advocating for high-quality early learning, fostering a sense of unity and collaboration in promoting the wellbeing of children and communities.

This year during Early Learning Matters Week we are celebrating our preschoolers’ literacy achievements. Now in our second year of teaching literacy through the Pre-lit program, we’ve noticed a significant increase in our preschooler literacy achievements. More than ever, our preschoolers are displaying pre-reading and early writing skills in response to Prelit. The program is giving our children the skills and confidence to practise literacy skills outside our daily literacy lesson in general play. The children are independently trying to write words by sounding them out as well as writing words that they’ve learnt. We’ve also offered the children early readers for the children to select read independently during the day.

We anticipate that we’ll see further literacy development amongst our preschoolers.

Prelit is a systematic skills-based early literacy preparation program for preschool children who will be making the transition to formal schooling the following year. It is designed to complement a play-based learning environment in preschool settings. It’s currently used to teach literacy in the Mary Bailey House preschool program and the College Prep class.

Jackie Baxter
Director of Mary Bailey House