Book Week is on its way, and at Sorella Early Learning in Griffin, we are kicking off our Literacy Launch, a preview of the book week activities for children we have been planning all August.
Setting the Scene for a Love of Books
Rather than saving all the excitement for one week, we spread our book week activities for children across the whole month, building genuine anticipation and giving every child time to find a story that speaks to them. This approach supports:
– Vocabulary growth through repeated, varied reading
– Confidence in choosing and talking about favourite books
– Early print and story structure awareness
– A shared sense of excitement across the whole centre
At Sorella Early Learning, our Literacy Launch is designed to make sure every child, no matter their age or stage, feels genuinely part of the celebration.
Our Book Week Program Preview
Meet the Mascot Story
We introduce a special story character who “visits” our centre throughout August, appearing in different books and activities to build a sense of shared narrative.
Reading Nook Refresh
Our cosy reading corners get a August makeover with cushions, fairy lights, and a rotating display of Book Week shortlisted titles for children to explore.
Storytelling Circles
Educators and children take turns telling favourite stories aloud, sometimes with puppets or props, building oral storytelling skills alongside listening comprehension.
Family Book Swap
We invite families to bring in a much-loved book from home to swap with another family, building a sense of shared community around reading.
Getting Ready at Home
Families can join our Literacy Launch by visiting the library to borrow a Book Week shortlisted title, reading together each evening, or asking children to retell their favourite part of a story in their own words.
At Sorella Early Learning, watching children’s excitement build week by week is one of our favourite parts of August, and we cannot wait for Book Week to finally arrive.
Keywords: book week activities for children, literacy launch preschool, Sorella Early Learning, Griffin early learning, early literacy Queensland, reading readiness children, Book Week program preview, children’s literature early years
Sources and Further Reading:
– State Library of Queensland – www.slq.qld.gov.au
– Raising Children Network – www.raisingchildren.net.au
– Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority – www.acecqa.gov.au
– Early Childhood Australia – www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au
When the winter weather encourages more time indoors, Sorella Early Learning transforms our spaces into a hub of creative engineering. July is a month where we love to set our children the most exciting, open-ended building challenges — and watch as little engineers get to work with remarkable focus, determination, and ingenuity.
What Is Engineering in Early Childhood?
Engineering in early childhood isn’t about textbooks or technical diagrams. It is about giving children real problems to solve using real materials — and then stepping back to let them think, try, fail, adjust, and try again.
The engineering mindset we nurture in young children includes:
– Curiosity: “I wonder what would happen if…?”
– Problem-solving: “This isn’t working — how can I fix it?”
– Persistence: “It fell down, so I’ll try a different way.”
– Collaboration: “You hold this part while I attach that part.”
– Creative thinking: “What if we used this material instead?”
These skills are among the most important a child can develop — and they are best built through joyful, purposeful play.
Our July Building Challenges at Sorella Early Learning
Challenge 1: The Tallest Tower
Using only 20 blocks, can you build the tallest tower that doesn’t fall? Children test different shapes, bases, and balancing strategies, learning about stability, centre of gravity, and trial-and-error through real experience.
Challenge 2: The Bridge
Using cardboard, tape, and recycled materials, build a bridge that can hold the weight of a toy car. This challenge introduces concepts of span, load, and structural support in a completely hands-on way.
Challenge 3: The Warm House
How would you build a shelter that keeps a small toy animal warm? Using fabric, boxes, wool, and natural materials, children design and construct miniature winter shelters — linking engineering to our winter season theme and to caring for living things.
Challenge 4: The Marble Run
Using cardboard tubes, ramps, and boxes, children design a course for a marble to travel from top to bottom. This challenge involves planning, sequencing, physics concepts (gravity, momentum), and a great deal of trial and refinement.
Challenge 5: The Boat That Floats
Can you make a boat from recycled materials that floats and holds weight? Our water table becomes a testing station as children experiment with different shapes and materials, exploring buoyancy through genuine scientific inquiry.
Challenge 6: The Paper Bridge
Using only 5 sheets of paper and tape, build a bridge that spans a 30cm gap. Paper engineering is one of the most beautifully simple and challenging STEM activities for young children — folding, rolling, and shaping paper into surprisingly strong structures.
The Role of Documentation in Engineering Learning
At Sorella Early Learning, we photograph and document children’s engineering journeys — capturing not just the finished product but the process: the planning, the setbacks, the eureka moments, and the proud smiles. This documentation helps families see the depth of thinking that goes into what might look like “just playing with blocks.”
We also invite children to draw their designs before building — introducing the concept of blueprints and design thinking in the most accessible, age-appropriate way.
Building Skills for Life
The children who build towers, bridges, and boats today are developing the problem-solving, persistence, and creative confidence that will carry them through school, through careers, and through life. At Sorella Early Learning, we take this seriously — and we have enormous fun doing it.
Keywords: engineering early childhood, building challenges preschool, STEM for young children, Sorella Early Learning, indoor learning winter, construction play early years, problem solving children, creative building preschool, early childhood STEM Queensland, engineering play preschool
Sources and Further Reading:
– Raising Children Network – www.raisingchildren.net.au
– Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) – www.acecqa.gov.au
– Early Childhood Australia – www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au
– CSIRO Education – www.csiro.au/education
– The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) – www.acecqa.gov.au/eylf
At Sorella Early Learning, sustainability is not a topic we visit once a year — it is woven into the fabric of every single day. But July provides a particularly rich opportunity to focus on environmental care, connecting the rhythms of the winter season with our ongoing commitment to looking after the world our children will inherit.
Why Winter Is a Great Time to Talk About Sustainability
The cooler months shift our daily rhythms in interesting ways. Energy use changes, gardens behave differently, and children become curious about the world going quiet, resting, and preparing for renewal. This natural seasonality opens up meaningful conversations about cycles, resources, care, and our responsibility to the planet.
At Sorella Early Learning, our July sustainability focus explores several interconnected themes.
Energy Awareness in Winter
Winter is when many households use more energy — heaters, hot water, electric blankets, dryers. We use this as an opportunity to talk with children about where energy comes from, why it matters, and simple habits that make a difference:
– Turning off lights when leaving a room
– Putting on an extra layer before turning up the heater
– Hanging clothes to dry in the sun on fine days rather than using a dryer
– Using natural light for as long as possible during the day
Children are natural champions of sustainability when given real knowledge and genuine agency.
Composting Through the Seasons
Our composting program continues through winter — and the slower decomposition rate in cooler weather becomes a learning opportunity. Children observe that worms and microbes are less active when it’s cold, discussing how temperature affects living organisms. We monitor our compost together, turning it, adding materials, and watching the slow transformation from food scraps to rich soil.
Water Conservation in Winter
Winter in Queensland can bring dry spells. We continue our water-wise practices throughout the cooler months — using collected rainwater for garden watering, noticing how plants need less water in cooler weather, and exploring the concept of evaporation through simple experiments.
Growing a Winter Garden
What grows in a Queensland winter garden? More than most people realise! Broccoli, kale, spinach, carrots, peas, and silverbeet are all winter crops. Our children love tending our garden beds, planting, watering (with collected water), and eventually harvesting food they helped grow. The connection between soil, seed, sun, water, and food is one of the most powerful sustainability lessons a young child can receive.
Reuse and Repurpose Challenges
In our July program, we set children the creative challenge of reimagining “waste” materials. Cardboard boxes become architecture, fabric scraps become soft toys, and egg cartons become garden seedling starters. These challenges build creativity while embedding the sustainability principle of reducing what we send to landfill.
Connecting to the Bigger Picture
At Sorella Early Learning, we are mindful of the balance between empowering children with environmental knowledge and overwhelming them with anxiety about climate challenges. Our approach is always age-appropriate, action-focused, and grounded in hope. We celebrate what we CAN do rather than dwelling on what is beyond our immediate control.
Keywords: sustainability early learning, environmental care children, Sorella Early Learning, winter gardening preschool, composting children, energy awareness early childhood, water conservation children, eco-friendly early learning, sustainability for preschoolers, environmental education Queensland
Sources and Further Reading:
– Raising Children Network – www.raisingchildren.net.au
– Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) – www.acecqa.gov.au
– Early Childhood Australia – www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au
– Sustainability Victoria – www.sustainability.vic.gov.au
– Kidspot Australia – www.kidspot.com.au
– The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) – www.acecqa.gov.au/eylf
Watch a 3-year-old for about 45 seconds and you will understand something fundamental about who they are: they are in motion. Constant, purposeful, joyful, sometimes chaotic motion.
That little person is not misbehaving. They are not restless. They are not failing to sit still.
They are learning.
Movement at age 3 is not a break from development — it is development. And at Sorella Early Learning in Griffin, we build our programs for 3-year-olds around this truth with genuine conviction.
Our Senior Toddlers (2–3 years) and Pre Kindy (3–4 years) rooms are intentionally designed to honour, celebrate, and purposefully develop the movement capabilities of every child. Here is why it matters so deeply — and the seven movement activities that our educators love most.
Why Movement Is the Foundation of Everything
The relationship between physical movement and child development runs deeper than most parents realise. Far deeper than fitness.
A 2024 meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Public Health confirmed that motor-development-focused activities in preschool-aged children (3–5 years) produce significantly better gross motor outcomes than unstructured activity alone — and that early gross motor competence is linked to physical health, psychosocial wellbeing, cognitive development, and academic achievement.
Closer to home, the Australian Government’s 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for children aged 3–5 years recommend at least three hours of physical activity per day, with at least one hour of energetic play — not because activity is good for children in the abstract, but because movement is how the 3-year-old brain builds its architecture.
When a child jumps, their vestibular system develops. When they climb, their core strengthens and their spatial reasoning grows. When they dance, bilateral coordination develops — the same left-right brain integration that later supports reading. When they balance, concentration deepens. When they run and stop and run again, they are practising impulse regulation — one of the cornerstones of school readiness.
At Sorella, we do not tolerate movement in spite of learning. We celebrate it because of learning.
Our 7 Favourite Movement Activities for 3-Year-Olds
🎵 1. Music and Dance: Moving to the Beat
Our Music Melodies program within the Sorella Seedlings Life Skills initiative is one of the most joyfully anticipated parts of the week in our Senior Toddlers and Pre Kindy rooms — and it is doing far more than children realise.
Dancing and moving to music develops bilateral coordination (using both sides of the body together), rhythm (the timing of movement), spatial awareness (understanding the body in space), and emotional expression (moving how you feel). Research shows that cross-lateral movement — crossing the midline of the body, as children do when they reach across to the opposite side — actively supports brain hemisphere integration and is a genuine developmental precursor to reading readiness.
At Sorella, music and movement is not a set activity that happens once a week and stops. It ripples through the whole day — a song at transition time, a spontaneous dance in response to something exciting, a percussion instrument on the table and an open invitation.
What children are building: bilateral coordination, rhythm, spatial awareness, emotional regulation, vestibular development, language (songs expand vocabulary beautifully)
🧘 2. Yoga and Mindful Movement
Our Mindful Moments program — developed through our partnership with the Resilience Project, with a focus on gratitude, empathy, mindfulness, and emotional literacy — includes weekly yoga sessions for our toddlers through to Pre Kindy children.
Yoga with 3-year-olds looks nothing like adult yoga. It looks like a child imitating a tree, wobbling, falling over laughing, and trying again. It looks like a child learning to take a deep breath when they feel overwhelmed. It looks like a child discovering that their body can be still — and that stillness feels good.
For children who are in constant motion, yoga provides a counterbalance: the experience of intentional, calm, focused physical engagement. This supports body awareness (proprioception), balance and core strength, attention regulation, and the emotional vocabulary that comes from naming body sensations.
What children are building: balance, core strength, proprioception, breath awareness, emotional regulation, attention, flexibility
🏃 3. Obstacle Courses: The Ultimate Whole-Body Challenge
There is perhaps no single activity that delivers more developmental value per minute for a 3-year-old than a well-designed obstacle course — and our purpose-built indoor and outdoor spaces at Sorella are perfect for exactly this.
An obstacle course might involve: crawling through a tunnel, jumping over cushions, balancing along a beam, throwing a ball into a basket, spinning around a cone, and leaping onto a crash mat. Every element targets a different aspect of gross motor development. Together, they create a full-body challenge that engages the brain as deeply as it engages the muscles.
Importantly, obstacle courses also build problem-solving (how do I get through this?), persistence (trying again when it is tricky), sequencing (what comes next?), and body regulation (managing energy and excitement). These are not just physical skills — they are the foundations of learning.
What children are building: gross motor skills across all categories (locomotion, balance, object control), problem-solving, sequencing, persistence, body regulation
🌿 4. Nature Navigation and Outdoor Exploration
Our Nature Navigators program takes 3-year-olds into the natural environment for guided discovery, scavenger hunts, and hands-on outdoor exploration — and the movement embedded in these experiences is rich and varied in ways that no indoor gym session can replicate.
Natural environments are inherently uneven. They have slopes, textures, unexpected surfaces, and living things that require care and attention. Walking on grass, navigating garden beds, crouching to look at an insect, stretching to reach a branch — these micro-movements develop the proprioceptive and vestibular systems in ways that flat, predictable surfaces simply cannot.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Government’s early childhood guidelines both emphasise that time in natural, outdoor environments supports developmental outcomes well beyond physical health — including cognitive curiosity, emotional regulation, and social connection. For our 3-year-olds, the garden is not a break from learning. It is among the most sophisticated learning environments we offer.
What children are building: proprioception, vestibular development, gross and fine motor skills, sensory processing, environmental connection, curiosity
🎯 5. Throwing, Catching and Ball Play
Object control skills — throwing, catching, kicking, rolling — are a distinct and critical category of gross motor development, and they are among the skills most commonly underdeveloped in children who miss out on intentional early movement experiences.
Research from Australian preschool intervention studies shows that focused attention on object control skills in the 3–5 year age range produces lasting improvements in movement competence that track well into middle childhood. These are not trivial playground activities. They are foundational physical literacy experiences.
At Sorella, ball play is woven into our outdoor program in structured and unstructured forms: rolling balls back and forth with a partner (building connection and turn-taking simultaneously), kicking toward simple targets, throwing beanbags into hoops. Even the imprecision is useful — a missed catch requires the body to adjust, track, and try again, each attempt building neural pathways that underpin coordination.
What children are building: hand-eye coordination, object control, bilateral coordination, spatial awareness, turn-taking, persistence
🎭 6. Dramatic Movement and Role Play
When a 3-year-old stomps around the room pretending to be a dinosaur, gallops like a horse, or tiptoes like a fairy, they are doing something developmentally remarkable: using their imagination to generate varied, full-body movement patterns that their bodies would not otherwise encounter in a typical day.
Dramatic movement is one of the richest intersections between physical development, language development, and social-emotional learning in early childhood. Children must listen, interpret, respond, and express — all through the medium of their moving body.
At Sorella, dramatic play and movement are constant features of our Senior Toddlers and Pre Kindy environments — in both guided group experiences and child-initiated, open-ended play. Our educators are skilled at scaffolding this kind of play without directing it, joining in as willing participants rather than instructors.
What children are building: full-body coordination, spatial awareness, narrative and language skills, emotional expression, social connection, creativity
🧗 7. Climbing, Balancing and Risk-Taking Play
At Sorella Early Learning, we believe in what the research community increasingly calls risky play — and our purpose-built facility in Griffin is designed to offer it safely.
Climbing structures, balance beams, low platforms, and unstable surfaces (a wobble board, a log balance course, stepping stones) give 3-year-olds the opportunity to experience manageable physical challenge — to test their limits, make decisions about their bodies, fall (safely), recover, and try again.
ACECQA’s National Quality Standard explicitly recognises the value of environments that challenge children physically and support appropriate risk-taking as part of quality early childhood practice. Climbing and balancing are not just fun — they are how children develop core strength, vestibular stability, spatial confidence, and critically, self-trust: the belief that their body is capable.
A child who has been allowed to climb, wobble, and recover in a safe environment develops a physical confidence that carries directly into other forms of learning. They know what it feels like to be unsure — and to get through it anyway.
What children are building: core strength, vestibular development, balance, spatial confidence, risk assessment, self-efficacy, gross motor development
Supporting Movement at Home
Movement development does not stop at the end of the childcare day — and the beautiful thing is that supporting it at home requires nothing more than time and a little space.
Turn on music and dance together in the kitchen. Set up a simple living room obstacle course with cushions and pillows. Kick a ball in the backyard. Walk to the park and let your child climb everything safely climbable. Encourage them to carry things, push things, balance on kerbs, and jump in puddles.
Every single one of these activities is building the gross motor foundation that supports not just physical health but the cognitive and emotional readiness your child will carry into their school years and beyond.
The Raising Children Network — Australia’s evidence-based parenting resource — notes that active play is among the most important things parents can offer young children, and that it is most powerful when it is unstructured, outdoors, and genuinely child-led.
Discover Our Senior Toddlers and Pre Kindy Programs
At Sorella Early Learning in Griffin, QLD, our Senior Toddlers (2–3 years) and Pre Kindy (3–4 years) rooms are designed by educators who understand that a child who moves well, learns well — and who love what they do every day.
We would love you to come and see our outdoor spaces, meet our team, and experience the warmth of a centre where play really is the work of childhood.
📞 07 2111 6711
📍 32 Tesch Rd, Griffin QLD 4503
🌐 Book a Tour →
📘 Facebook →
From our family to yours — with love, play, and movement.
Sources: Frontiers in Public Health — Motor development-focused exercise training and gross motor skills in preschool children (Wang & Zhou, 2024); Australian Government 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children aged 3–5 years (health.gov.au); NAPA Centre Australia — Gross Motor Development: Skills for Infants and Toddlers by Age (napacentre.com.au); Australian preschool movement skill intervention research — NSW three-year follow-up of movement skill intervention (PMC, 2012); Australian Institute of Family Studies — Physical activity and children’s development (aifs.gov.au); ACECQA — National Quality Standard, Quality Area 3: Physical Environment (acecqa.gov.au); Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 (EYLF), Australian Government Department of Education (education.gov.au); Raising Children Network — Active play for children (raisingchildren.net.au); The Resilience Project — Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness and Emotional Literacy (theresilienceproject.com.au).
Here is a question worth sitting with: what does it actually mean to teach a 4-year-old to read?
Because if your answer involves flashcards, letter drills, and worksheets, the research — and the children — would gently disagree.
What a 4-year-old needs from literacy is not instruction. It is immersion. Not pressure. Wonder. Not performance. Play.
At Sorella Early Learning in Griffin, our Queensland Government-approved Kindergarten program is built around this understanding. We know that the most powerful foundation a child can have for a lifetime of reading and learning is not the ability to decode words at age four — it is a deep, embodied, joyful relationship with language, story, and the world of books.
Here is how we build that foundation, every single day.
Why 4 Is Such an Important Year for Literacy
The research is unequivocal: what happens in the year before formal schooling has a profound and lasting impact on a child’s reading journey. A landmark study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that children’s scores on phonological awareness tasks at age four significantly predicted their reading and spelling outcomes six years later.
But here is what that research also tells us: the skills that predict reading success at 4 are not about reading itself. They are about sound. Rhythm. Language. Story. Vocabulary. The richness of a child’s oral world.
Phonological awareness — the ability to hear and play with the sounds in spoken language — is the single most robust predictor of early reading success. It is built through rhyming games, clapping syllables, singing, tongue twisters, nonsense words, and joyful repetition of favourite texts. It is built, in other words, through exactly the kinds of experiences that a brilliant early childhood program creates every day.
At Sorella Early Learning, our Kindy educators are guided by both the Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 (EYLF) and the Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guidelines (QKLG) 2024, which emphasise play-based learning, rich oral language experiences, and intentional literacy teaching as the cornerstones of early childhood education.
The 6 Pillars of Reading Readiness We Build at Sorella
🔊 1. Phonological Awareness: Playing With Sound
Before a child can read, they need to understand that spoken language is made up of individual sounds — and that those sounds can be separated, blended, and manipulated.
In our Kindy room, this looks like:
Rhyming games — “What rhymes with cat? bat, hat, mat, splat!” — where the sillier, the better
Syllable clapping to names, food words, and favourite animals: el-e-phant (clap, clap, clap)
Onset and rime: breaking words into their beginning sound and their ending family (c-at, h-at, s-at)
These activities feel like games. They are also among the most powerful literacy interventions available to early childhood educators — and our Kindy team weaves them through every part of the day, from morning circle time to outdoor play.
📖 2. Shared Book Reading: The Heart of It All
Our Sorella Seedlings community library is one of the features of our centre we are proudest of — and it is no coincidence that books sit at the very centre of our literacy program.
Australian research published in the Early Childhood Education Journal found that shared book reading between educators and four-year-old preschoolers is one of the most powerful contexts for building both oral language and emergent literacy skills. It is not just the reading that matters — it is the conversation around the reading: the questions asked, the predictions made, the words explored, the connections drawn between the story and the child’s own life.
In our Kindy room, shared book reading is never passive. Our educators:
Ask open questions that invite prediction and imagination: “What do you think will happen next?”
Draw attention to print: pointing to words, showing how we read left to right, noticing punctuation
Explore vocabulary deliberately: pausing on rich words, offering child-friendly definitions, encouraging children to use new words in context
Re-read favourite books repeatedly — because repetition is how language is absorbed at this age
Every child in our Kindy room has access to our community library. Borrowing a book to take home, sharing it with a family, and returning it to be read again by another child: this is literacy as community practice.
🔤 3. Alphabet Knowledge and Letter-Sound Connections
Knowing the names and sounds of letters — alphabet knowledge — is one of the strongest individual predictors of early reading achievement. At age 4, this is not about memorising the alphabet in order. It is about genuine, curious engagement with letters as meaningful symbols.
At Sorella, alphabet learning is embedded in everything:
Our Art Studio is where children write their names in finger paints and experiment with mark-making — early writing and letter recognition happening simultaneously through joyful sensory play
Environmental print throughout the room: children’s names on their belongings, labelled materials, words on signs that children begin to recognise as their own
Alphabet songs and movement games connecting letter sounds to physical actions — because the body remembers what the mind learns through movement
Name work — a child’s own name is their first and most motivating text. Writing it, recognising it, sounding it out
🗣️ 4. Oral Language and Vocabulary
A rich vocabulary is not just a literacy asset — it is the foundation of reading comprehension. A child who cannot understand the words they decode cannot truly read. Vocabulary is built through conversation, story, and exposure to varied, interesting language — and our Kindy program is deliberately rich in all three.
Our Music Melodies program through the Sorella Seedlings Life Skills initiative contributes meaningfully here. Singing develops phonological awareness, expands vocabulary, builds memory, and creates the emotional connection to language that makes a child want to read. A child who loves to sing is already well on the way to loving books.
Our educators are trained in sustained shared thinking — the practice of engaging in extended, back-and-forth conversations with children that deepen thinking and vocabulary simultaneously. These are not quick exchanges. They are the unhurried conversations about a caterpillar on the garden leaf, the story a child told at circle time, the question that nobody can answer and that we decide to find out together.
✏️ 5. Early Writing and Mark-Making
Writing and reading are two sides of the same coin — and children who are given regular, pleasurable opportunities to make marks, write their names, and tell their stories through drawing and writing develop stronger literacy skills overall.
At Sorella, our dedicated Art Studio is a space where mark-making, drawing, and early writing happen naturally and joyfully. Children move through a progression from scribbling to drawing to symbol-making to letter-like forms to actual letters — and every stage is celebrated as meaningful communication.
Providing children with real writing tools — clipboards, notebooks, pens, chalk on the footpath — communicates something important: your marks matter. Your words matter. Your stories are worth writing down.
🌿 6. A Love of Story, Wonder and Language
Perhaps the most important thing we do at Sorella is this: we make language something children feel deeply connected to.
Through our Nature Navigators and Bush Kindy experiences, children develop rich descriptive language about the natural world. Through our Mindful Moments program, children learn to put words to their emotions — one of the most sophisticated and underrated literacy tasks a young child can master. Through dramatic play, they retell stories, invent characters, and inhabit narratives. Through cooking in our Little Chefs program, they read recipes, follow instructions, and learn that text has purpose in the real world.
All of this, together, is what it means to teach a 4-year-old to read.
Not a worksheet in sight.
What You Can Do at Home
The most powerful literacy tool a family has is simple: talk, sing, and read together. Every day.
Ask your child about their day using open questions. Listen fully. Sing songs on the way to the centre. Borrow books from our community library and read them together at bedtime — not once, but again and again until your child knows every word by heart (which is its own remarkable early literacy milestone).
And notice the words on the cereal box at breakfast. The letters on the street sign. The writing on the shopping bag. When you point to print in the world and say “that says Stop”, you are doing exactly what our Kindy educators do — teaching your child that words are everywhere, that they mean something, and that one day, very soon, your child will be able to read them all.
Discover Our Kindergarten Program
Our Kindergarten program at Sorella Early Learning in Griffin is open to children aged 4–5 years, delivered by university-qualified Early Childhood Teachers, and includes 15 hours of Queensland Government Free Kindy.
We would love to show you our community library, our art studio, and the Kindy room where your child’s reading story begins.
📞 07 2111 6711
📍 32 Tesch Rd, Griffin QLD 4503
🌐 Book a Tour →
📸 Instagram →
High quality early learning, care and love — from our family to yours.
Sources: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology — Phonological awareness at age 4 as a predictor of reading outcomes (longitudinal research); Early Childhood Education Journal — Oral language and emergent literacy strategies in shared book reading with Australian preschoolers (Springer Nature, 2022); Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) — QKLG 2024, Active Learning (qcaa.qld.gov.au); Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 (EYLF), Australian Government Department of Education (education.gov.au); ACECQA — Play-based learning and intentionality, National Quality Standard (acecqa.gov.au); Queensland Department of Education — Effective Teaching of Reading Literature Review (education.qld.gov.au); International Literacy Association — Phonological Awareness in Early Childhood Literacy Development.
Sorella Early Learning respectfully acknowledges the Kabi Kabi, Turrbal, and Jinibara peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters of the City of Moreton Bay, on which our centre stands. We pay our deep respect to Elders past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge their enduring connection to Country, culture, and community.
At Sorella Early Learning in Griffin, we believe that every child deserves to grow up knowing the full story of the land they call home — a story that begins not in 1788, not in the naming of Griffin as a suburb, but tens of thousands of years before any of us arrived on this beautiful south-east Queensland earth.
The land on which Sorella stands, on which our children play and learn and grow every day, is the Country of the Kabi Kabi people — the Traditional Custodians whose connection to this region of south-east Queensland stretches back further than memory reaches. It is also the Country of the Turrbal and Jinibara peoples, recognised alongside the Kabi Kabi by the City of Moreton Bay as Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters across our region.
Long before Tesch Road was named, before Griffin was mapped, before any of our families moved to this suburb of low-set homes and wide streets and late-afternoon breezes — there were children here. Children who played. Children who ran, and threw, and caught, and laughed. Children whose games carried knowledge, whose play taught culture, and whose movement on Country was itself a form of learning.
At Sorella, we are committed to honouring that inheritance. Our Indigenous Games program is how we begin.
What Are Indigenous Games — And Why Do They Matter?
Indigenous games are not simply historical curiosities or novelty activities to bring out during NAIDOC Week. They are a living, sophisticated tradition — a body of knowledge about movement, community, skill, strategy, and the deep relationship between people and Country that has been passed down through countless generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Australia.
The Queensland Government recognises this explicitly through its dedicated Burragun Games Trail resource, which documents traditional games played by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Queensland. The word Burragun, from the Yugambeh language, means boomerang — itself a symbol of a game in perfect balance, going out and coming back, returning what it was given.
The Games Trail was developed in consultation with Indigenous communities and is grounded in almost every available historical account of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander games. It is offered not as a replacement for genuine community engagement, but as a starting point for respectful learning — and as an invitation to discover that Australia’s play and sports culture is far older, far richer, and far more sophisticated than two centuries of European settlement have acknowledged.
For young children in early childhood settings, Indigenous games offer something uniquely valuable: they are play-based, inclusive, physical, cooperative, and deeply connected to Country. They are, in the truest sense of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), learning through doing — exactly as children have always learned.
Buroinjin: The Game of the Kabi Kabi People
Of all the traditional games documented across Queensland, one holds particular significance for children at Sorella Early Learning: Buroinjin.
Buroinjin was a ball game played by the Kabi Kabi people — the Traditional Custodians of this very Country in south-east Queensland. The ball, called a buroinjin, was made from kangaroo skin, shaped and worked by hand into a round, solid sphere.
The game itself was played across an open field. Players from one team would attempt to run with the ball and cross to the other end without being touched by an opponent — a physical, fast-moving, whole-body game of agility, strategy, and teamwork. The Queensland Government’s Burragun Games Trail notes that the game was vigorous, joyful, and deeply communal — a game that brought players of all ages together in a shared physical and cultural experience.
For children at Sorella, a developmentally adapted version of Buroinjin is one of the most exciting outdoor movement experiences we offer — and one of the most meaningful. Because when our children run across our outdoor spaces on the Country of the Kabi Kabi people, they are not just playing a game. They are participating, however humbly, in a tradition that belongs to this place.
We introduce Buroinjin with care, with context, and — wherever possible — with the involvement of Kabi Kabi community members and Elders who can share the story of the game in their own voice and from their own authority.
More Games, More Stories: Traditional Play Across Queensland
Beyond Buroinjin, the Queensland Government’s Burragun Games Trail documents a rich variety of traditional Indigenous games from across Queensland and Australia. Here are some of the activities we draw upon in our program — each offered with respect, with context, and with the understanding that these games belong to their communities:
🌀 Waayin — Tracking and Observation
Waayin was derived from the study of animal and bird tracks — an essential part of educating Aboriginal children in the skills of observation, pattern recognition, and connection to Country. In our version, children follow tracks (drawn, pressed, or made with stamps) across our outdoor space, practising the deep attention and curiosity of the tracker. This is science, literacy, and cultural awareness all at once.
⚙️ Mer Kai — Keeping Up
In Mer Kai, a ball is kept in the air for as long as possible without touching the ground — similar to the game many children now know as hacky sack. It is a game of focus, coordination, persistence, and teamwork. In Torres Strait Islander tradition, players stood in a circle and sang the kai wed (ball song) as they played — connecting movement, music, and community in a single experience.
🎯 Weme — Rolling and Aiming
Weme is a rolling game in which balls are aimed underarm along the ground towards a target. It is a game of precision, patience, and spatial reasoning — and it is wonderfully accessible for children across a wide age range. The name comes from the Eastern Arrernte language and refers to throwing something at a target and hitting it.
🏃 Barambah Gimbe — Ball and Catch
Gimbe means “play” in the Wakka Wakka language — the language of another south Queensland First Nations people. Barambah gimbe involves throwing a ball high into the air and attempting to catch it — a game of anticipation, timing, and physical coordination. Hearing and using language words from south Queensland’s First Nations peoples in our play is a small but genuine act of cultural recognition.
How We Approach This Work at Sorella
Let us be clear about something important: embedding Indigenous games into our program is not something we do once a year and then consider complete. It is not a theme week. It is not a display on a wall. And it is never done without genuine cultural guidance and community partnership.
The Queensland Department of Education’s Cultural Capability Framework sets out clear expectations for early childhood services: that we develop genuine, ongoing relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, communities, and Elders; that we approach cultural work with flexibility and a willingness to be guided; and that we foster local decision-making and co-design rather than imposing our own interpretations of culture from the outside.
At Sorella, this means:
Genuinely inviting Kabi Kabi, Turrbal, and Jinibara community members to be part of how we introduce and share Indigenous games and cultural activities
Using only culturally appropriate activities — the Queensland Government’s Burragun Games Trail resource specifically avoids games used in initiation ceremonies or religious events, and we follow this guidance carefully
Contextualising every game so children understand whose game it is, where it comes from, and why it is significant
Approaching this as an ongoing journey, not a completed task — always open to feedback, always willing to learn, always humble about what we do not yet know
The goal is not cultural performance. The goal is genuine, respectful, living cultural connection — for every child in our care, regardless of whether they are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and regardless of where their family came from to reach Griffin.
Why Indigenous Games Matter for All Children
Cultural education through play belongs to every child — not just Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. In fact, the Queensland Department of Education is explicit that embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education is as important for non-Indigenous children as it is for Indigenous children.
When all children play Buroinjin, when they learn to say gimbe (play) in Wakka Wakka, when they learn that the land they run on has a history older than written record — they are developing:
Cultural awareness and respect — a foundation for the kind of inclusive, empathetic, reconciliation-minded Australians our children deserve to become
Physical literacy — Indigenous games develop the same gross motor skills, coordination, balance, and physical confidence as any other movement program, while adding layers of cultural meaning
Mathematical and scientific thinking — tracking, aiming, catching, pattern recognition and spatial reasoning are woven through these games naturally
Language development — hearing and using words from south Queensland’s First Nations languages builds phonological awareness and a genuine sense of the diversity and richness of Australia’s linguistic heritage
Social and emotional development — cooperative, inclusive, non-competitive play builds empathy, teamwork, and a genuine sense of community
And for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in our care — seeing their culture reflected in our games, our language, our stories, and our outdoor spaces is an affirmation of identity and belonging that the Queensland Government’s early childhood resources recognise as fundamental to every child’s sense of self.
Extending the Learning: Playing Together at Home in Griffin
The spirit of Indigenous games can extend beyond our centre into the parks, backyards, and streets of the Griffin community. Here are some simple, joyful ways to explore these ideas at home:
Play Barambah Gimbe — Take a soft ball to your local park, throw it as high as you can, and try to catch it. Call out “gimbe!” (play) when you throw. This is it. That’s the game. That is 10,000 years of play culture alive in your backyard.
Go tracking — Walk through your local park and look for tracks: birds in mud, insects in sand, the impression of a bicycle tyre. Talk about what made each mark. This is the art of the tracker — one of the oldest and most sophisticated human skills there is.
Visit the Burragun Games Trail — The Queensland Government has documented traditional Indigenous games in a publicly accessible resource online. Explore it together as a family. Choose a game to try. Let your child be the expert.
Learn a word in Kabi Kabi language — The Kabi Kabi People’s Aboriginal Corporation (kabikabination.com.au) is the representative body for the Kabi Kabi people whose Country we live on. Learning even a single word of the language of the Country you live on is an act of respect that takes moments and lasts a lifetime.
Acknowledge Country together — Before you head outside to play, take a quiet moment together and acknowledge that you are playing on the Country of the Kabi Kabi, Turrbal, and Jinibara peoples. Explain what this means in words your child can understand. This is the most important game of all — the practice of paying attention to where you are and who was here before you.
The EYLF and Indigenous Games: Learning Through Every Outcome
Our Indigenous Games program is grounded in the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) V2.0 across all five learning outcomes:
Outcome 1 – Strong sense of identity: For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, seeing their culture’s games played with respect in our setting affirms who they are. For all children, engaging with the games of this Country builds a sense of belonging to place — to Griffin, to the Moreton Bay region, to Australia.
Outcome 2 – Connected to their world: The Queensland Government’s early childhood resources describe this outcome as children observing, exploring, and building their understanding of the world’s diversity. Indigenous games are a direct, living expression of cultural diversity — not in a textbook, but in the child’s own moving, laughing body.
Outcome 3 – Strong sense of wellbeing: Physical activity, joy, inclusion, and belonging — Indigenous games deliver all of these, supporting children’s physical health and emotional resilience simultaneously.
Outcome 4 – Confident and involved learners: Tracking, pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, motor skill development, and the kind of focused, purposeful inquiry that Indigenous games naturally inspire are all central to this outcome.
Outcome 5 – Effective communicators: Hearing words from Kabi Kabi, Wakka Wakka, and other south Queensland languages, learning the names and stories of games, and sharing what they have discovered with their families all build the rich, multidimensional communication skills of EYLF Outcome 5.
A Note on Doing This Well
We want to say, clearly and honestly, that this work requires ongoing humility.
Sorella Early Learning opened in September 2023. We are a young centre on ancient Country. We are still learning. We do not claim to have arrived at a perfect cultural program — we claim to be genuinely, earnestly trying to get it right, in partnership with the communities whose knowledge and whose Country we are privileged to share.
If you are a Kabi Kabi, Turrbal, or Jinibara community member, or an Elder from any part of south-east Queensland’s First Nations communities — we genuinely, warmly, sincerely welcome your voice in shaping how we do this work. Please reach out. Our doors — and our hearts — are open.
The following Queensland-based and nationally recognised early childhood and cultural sources were used in the research and writing of this blog post. No other early childhood or childcare services have been cited as sources.
Queensland Government – Traditional Indigenous Games Trail (Burragun Games Trail)qld.gov.au – Traditional Indigenous Games Trail — A Queensland Government resource documenting traditional games played by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Queensland, developed in consultation with Indigenous communities. Specifically references the Buroinjin ball game of the Kabi Kabi people of south Queensland.
City of Moreton Bay – Traditional Custodians Informationourstory.moretonbay.qld.gov.au – Traditional Custodians — The City of Moreton Bay’s official acknowledgement of the Kabi Kabi, Jinibara, and Turrbal peoples as the Traditional Custodians of lands and waters throughout the City of Moreton Bay, including Griffin, QLD.
Queensland Department of Education – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Capability Frameworkeducation.qld.gov.au – Cultural Capability Framework — The Queensland Department of Education’s framework outlining the responsibilities of early childhood services in developing genuine, respectful relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, Elders, and families.
Queensland Department of Education – Resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communitiesearlychildhood.qld.gov.au – Resources for ATSI Communities — Queensland Government early childhood resources including the Ngana Waguna Woori Mumba artwork and Elders as Storytellers resources, connecting culture, Country, and early learning.
Queensland Government – Early Childhood Educationqld.gov.au – Early Childhood — Queensland Government information on the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF V2.0), Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guidelines, and embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education.
Queensland Government – Resources for Parents and Familiesqld.gov.au – Resources for Parents — Queensland Government guidance for families on supporting children’s learning, cultural awareness, and connection to Country through everyday activities.
Early Childhood Australia – Queensland Committeeearlychildhoodaustralia.org.au – Queensland Branch — Queensland’s peak advocacy body for early childhood education and care, providing research, resources, and guidance on embedding First Nations perspectives, cultural education, and reconciliation in early childhood settings.
Kabi Kabi People’s Aboriginal Corporationkabikabination.com.au — The representative body for the Kabi Kabi people, the Traditional Custodians of the Country on which Sorella Early Learning stands, including the preservation and sharing of Kabi Kabi culture, language, and heritage.
Sorella Early Learning is a family-owned, purpose-built early learning centre in Griffin, QLD, dedicated to nurturing and empowering every child to blossom into their best selves. We welcome children from 6 weeks to school age, Monday to Friday, 6:30am to 6:30pm. We are committed to embedding genuine, respectful, and ongoing cultural education across everything we do. To enquire about enrolment or to share your cultural knowledge with our team, please contact us today.
