The Willows Preschool and Early Learning Centre

🎶 Music Mondays with Ruth 🎶

How lucky we are to welcome Ruth Thompson, from Early Years Music School to The Willows every fortnight, where she shares her incredible expertise, passion, and wealth of musical knowledge with both our educators and children.

Music Mondays have become such a special part of our fortnight. Through singing, movement, rhythm, instruments and joyful shared experiences, Ruth creates engaging learning opportunities that nurture children's confidence, creativity, communication and sense of belonging.

We know that music plays such an important role in children's development, supporting language, social and emotional wellbeing, coordination, memory and so much more. We are incredibly grateful to Ruth for inspiring a lifelong love of music in our children while also providing meaningful, hands-on professional learning that enriches our educators' practice.

Thank you, Ruth, for the joy, knowledge and enthusiasm you bring to our community. We are so fortunate to have you as part of The Willows family. 💚🎵

Amy Collins
Village Coordinator & Educational Services Facilitator

🔴🟡⚫️ Johnny cakes with Corey 🟢⚪️🔵

Part of our Lift-off and Willows philosophy focuses on providing opportunities for children and educators to collaboratively engage in meaningful everyday experiences; we cook almost every week and are even putting our own cook book together. We have also been focusing on fire safety and had a visit from the fire fighters from Orange Fire Station, after many children expressed spending their weekends camping and having fires at home with their families.

During the school holidays, we welcomed, Wiradjuri man and long-standing friend of The Willows, Corey McLean, from Bangamalanha Gulbanha, as we celebrated 50 Years of NAIDOC Week together.

Gathered around the fire pit in our yarning circle, the children learnt how to make traditional johnny cakes, each mixing their own simple dough using flour, salt and water before cooking them over the fire. The best part was enjoying the warm johnny cakes with butter, honey or jam.

Cultural experiences like these provide our children with meaningful opportunities to connect with and learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, traditions and history through hands-on, authentic experiences. We are incredibly grateful to Corey for sharing his knowledge, stories and culture with us year after year. We look forward to working with Corey again later in the year.

Amy Collins
Village Coordinator & Educational Services Facilitator

Bowen Public School Excursions

Towards the end of last term, we were invited to visit Bowen Public School. It was a wonderful opportunity for children who are heading to school next year to visit a primary school and see what a primary classroom looks like.

The Inventors children had a wonderful time joining Kindergarten Silver and Miss Maguire in some classroom activities, touring the school, reading ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell in the library and playing on the equipment. It was nice to see some familiar faces too!

A huge thank you to the amazing teachers and staff at Bowen Public School and for Kirsty for giving her time to show us around.

Amy Collins
Village Coordinator and Educational Services Facilitator

What a wonderful experience to be a part of! Thank you for having us Bletchington Public School - NSW DoE 😊

📚🎒✨ School Information Night ✨🎒📚

We would like to extend our sincere and heartfelt thanks to Mrs Rebecca Hilton Brown, Deputy Principal, and Mrs Tanya Felice, Assistant Principal Infants, from Orange Public School for taking the time to present at our annual School Information Night last night. We truly appreciate you sharing your knowledge, insights and support with our families as they prepare for this exciting time.

To all the families who attended, thank you for coming along and engaging in the evening. We hope you found the session informative, valuable and reassuring as you begin this important journey with your child.

We look forward to continuing to work alongside a variety of local schools to provide meaningful transition opportunities, strengthen community connections, and ensure our children feel confident and supported throughout their year before school.

If any families have further questions about starting school, please don’t hesitate to contact Cass or myself — we are always happy to help.

Amy Collins
Village Coordinator & Educational Services Coordinator

🎶 Music Mondays with Ruth 🎶

Over three Monday sessions this term, Ruth Thompson, from “Early Years Music School” will be working alongside educators and children across the centre to enrich our musical experiences and knowledge.

During her first visit on Monday 18th May, Ruth worked with the Butterfly, Joeys, Explorers and Inventors children and educators. Children enjoyed learning new songs, finger rhymes, playing a range of percussion instruments, and discovering creative ways to listen, think and move their bodies through music.

We’re looking forward to welcoming Ruth back next visit, as she works with the Rainbow and Sunshine rooms and continues sharing her love of music with us throughout the term!

Amy Collins
Village Coordinator & Educational Services Facilitator

Thank you Mayor Tony Mileto for taking the time out of your busy day to visit us!

🌟 OUR SCHOOL IS SPECTACULAR 🌟

Our Inventors Room (4–5 year olds) have worked incredibly hard to create a beautiful display for this year’s Orange Show!

The 2026 theme, “Our School is Spectacular,” gave us the perfect opportunity to showcase the child-led, nature-based, play-focused learning and strong community connections that make The Willows Preschool and Early Learning Centre so special.

Our lovingly handcrafted scarecrow, “Banjo the Swagman,” is also proudly on display in the Ag Pavilion in the ‘Best Dressed Scarecrow Representing the Orange Region’ section.

We are so proud of our preschoolers and our creative educators, who put so much care, passion and teamwork into contributing to the show each year.

Be sure to head down and take a look at the amazing work created not only by our children, but by students and young people from across our wonderful community.

A big thank you to the Orange Show Society for all the time, effort and dedication that goes into organising such a wonderful community event each year!

Amy Collins
Village Coordinator & Educational Services Facilitator