Written by the team at Dashing Ducks Castle Hill

Grandparents Day Castle Hill: Our Centre Through Nonna's Eyes

Grandparents tend to slow a morning down. They stop for the snail on the fence. They read the story twice, then a third time. At our Castle Hill child care centre a good number of the people doing drop-off and pick-up are grandparents, and with NSW Grandparents Day on Sunday 25 October, it seemed like a good moment to say something about that.

Last week one of our Castle Hill grandmothers sat down in the garden to talk about her family’s experience of Dashing Ducks. The video is titled “Dashing Ducks through Nonna’s eyes”, which is about as good a summary as we could have written ourselves.

A grandmother's view of Dashing Ducks

She talked about the educators her grandchild sees each week and about what being part of the community here has meant to her family. We will let her tell it.

We hear a version of this fairly often. The grandparent who does Tuesdays and Thursdays because both parents are back at work. The nonna who knows every educator by first name. The pop who takes the handover at the door and relays the whole thing over dinner. For plenty of Hills District families the grandparent is not an occasional visitor to the centre. They are part of the routine, and they turn up with the same questions a parent has about how the day went.

Our family testimonials run along much the same lines, which is part of why we wanted to hear from a grandparent this time rather than a parent.

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What grandparents add to the early years

Children work out who they are partly from the people around them, and grandparents bring something parents often cannot spare: unhurried time, and stories from further back.

Two of the five learning outcomes in the Early Years Learning Framework deal with a child having a strong sense of identity and feeling connected to their world. Grandparents feed both directly. A four-year-old who hears about the town her nonno grew up in, or who picks up a handful of words in a language her parents only half speak, is doing real identity work while it looks like she is just listening. The Raising Children Network has a useful set of articles on the grandparent relationship if you want to read further.

There is a practical side too. Grandparents who are around the centre regularly tend to notice things. They can tell when a child is wobbly about a transition, because they have watched a child go through it before.

Grandparents Day Castle Hill: visiting us and celebrating at home

Our Garthowen Crescent centre is a heritage home rather than a purpose-built box, and that changes how a visit feels. There is a verandah to sit on, and a sensory garden out the back where a grandparent and a three-year-old can happily spend twenty minutes on one plant.

Grandparents are welcome to linger at drop-off, to come in and read to a room, or to join us for celebrations through the year. Where a grandparent is a main contact for a child, we set them up on the parent app so the photos and the daily notes reach them too. Something that matters more than it sounds: several of our educators have been here for years, so the grandmother doing Thursday pick-up this year is often talking to the same educator she got to know with her first grandchild.

If you are after Grandparents Day Castle Hill ideas for Sunday, they do not need to be elaborate. Have your child interview their grandparent, where three questions is plenty. Cook something a grandparent used to make and let your child do the mixing. Dig out old photographs, because children are delighted by the idea that their nonna was once a kid with scabby knees.

Our long day care and school readiness programs take children from six weeks to five years, and we are a CCS-approved service, so you can check your eligibility on Starting Blocks or read how the Child Care Subsidy works before you come in.