Sixteen years celebrating National Simultaneous Storytime in the High Country.
Brilliant vibrant blue was the colour theme for the beautifully illustrated emotional story called Bowerbird Blues.
This picture book from Aura Parker stars a beautiful bowerbird on the search for blue.
Inspired by the Australian Satin Bowerbird, Bowerbird Blues was chosen as this year’s National Simultaneous Storytime book.
In the 16th year of celebrating the event in the High Country the Swifts Creek P-12 School year seven students held up the wonderful tradition of producing an entertaining play to perform to schools, kindergartens and families across the High Country.
Delivering the story with clever use of props and costumes, the older students delighted the younger ones in a wonderful atmosphere of learning and sharing, about the different habits of the Australian Satin Bowerbird.
Many joined in listening to the story, inspiring curiosity and intrigue about the birds habits and encouraging an understanding and love for the natural world.
The moving story was about connection and longing, with the bowerbird searching the vast sky and sea, visiting cities to snatch anything blue. His bower become filled with many and varied blue objects that he collected on his flights, but his life was incomplete, he was still missing something.
Until his bower attracted something far more fulfilling than he had expected, a special friend.
Omeo Primary School, Omeo High Country United Early Learning Centre, Swifts Creek P-12 School, Swifts Creek Kindergarten and families took the opportunity to come along and enjoy the story and it was great to see such a wide range of ages involved, from babies and toddlers, kindergarten students and prep through to year six students, parents and even a grandparent.
Fifteen NSS books and photographs of past performances from 2009 to 2023 were on display to show the timeline of many wonderful performances the students have given.
Participating families were given a copy of Bowerbird Blues to take and relive the story in their own home and to explore more information on the habits of the Australian birdlife.
Schools as Hubs coordinator, Rowena Turner, said the year 7s worked well as a team to produce the play to deliver to their younger peers. They were very engaged and used
skill and imagination to make colourful props and costumes which looked amazing on the day.
“A huge thank you to the year sevens and their teacher Paisley Dennis for helping celebrate our 16th successful National Simultaneous Story time,” Rowena said.
“Literacy is such an important foundation for life and learning, and events like National Simultaneous Storytime are all part of that development for children. Getting the community and families involved is a great way to share enthusiasm for reading and to make it a special and enjoyable activity.
We hope that activities such as these will translate into more and more children developing a lifelong love of reading.”
National Simultaneous Story time is one of the many events that the program, which is funded by Communities for Children, Uniting, supports throughout the year.
IMAGE: Bowerbird Blues was chosen as this year’s National Simultaneous Storytime book by Swifts Creek P-12 with year seven students creating a wonderful performance. (PS)
