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Written by Amie, Dashing Ducks Castle Hill
Our Teddy Bears Picnic Sent 62 Bears to Westmead
Our teddy bears picnic is always one of the days our children look forward to most. There are rugs out on the grass, morning tea to share, and an awful lot of bears.
This year we wanted to add something to it. Alongside the picnic, we asked our families and the wider Hills community whether they might donate a teddy bear, new or pre-loved, for a child who could use a little extra comfort. What came back was so much more than we expected.
Here is how it all came together at our day care and preschool in Castle Hill.
Turning Our Teddy Bears Picnic Into Something More
The idea was a simple one. We put the word out a few weeks beforehand, quietly hoping we might gather a box of bears between us.
They began arriving almost straight away. Some were brand new with the tags still on. Others came from bedrooms at home, carried in by children who had thought about it carefully and decided that another little one might need them more. Those were especially lovely to receive, because we know how much we were asking of a three or four year old in that moment.
A number of families told us their child had chosen the bear themselves. That meant a great deal to all of us here.
Sixty-Two Bears
By the morning of the picnic, our count had reached 62.
They filled three large boxes right to the top. There were big golden bears that needed two hands to carry, small cream ones, some that had clearly been well loved over the years and others that had never been cuddled at all. The children helped us sort them, and they kept wandering back over during the day to see whether the pile had grown again.
Sixty-two is not a number that means a great deal when you are three. Three enormous boxes you can only just see over is another thing altogether, and our children were very proud of them.
Taking the Bears to Westmead
This week we were able to deliver every one of them to the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, part of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, where the team will pass them on to children and families on the wards.
Anyone who has spent time in a children’s hospital with their own little one will understand why this mattered so much to us. Hospital can be a very big and unfamiliar place when you are small. A teddy will not change what a child is going through, but it is something soft to hold on to when the grown ups are busy, and it is theirs to keep.
Why We Do This With Our Three and Four Year Olds
Kindness is not something children pick up simply from being told about it. They learn it by doing it, and by watching the people around them do it too.
One of the outcomes we work towards under the Early Years Learning Framework is that children become socially responsible and show respect for other people. A donation drive gives that a shape a young child can follow. They carry a bear in, place it in the box, and hear that it is going to another child who is unwell. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and it is small enough for them to hold on to.
We talked about it gently in the rooms in the weeks beforehand, in a way that felt right for their age. Several of the children asked us more than once whether the children in hospital would get to keep the bears. They will, and we were very glad to be able to tell them so.
Hospitals were not an entirely new idea for the children. They had already spent time thinking about the people who work in them when we marked International Nurses Day earlier in the year.
Thank You From All of Us
To every family who sent in a bear, and especially to those who sat down and talked it through with their child first, thank you. Sixty-two was well beyond anything we imagined when we began planning this teddy bears picnic.
And to the children who gave away a teddy that was already their own, that was the harder thing to do, and you did it beautifully. We were so proud of you all.
We are at 14 Garthowen Crescent, Castle Hill, in an old heritage home with a sensory garden out the back. If you would ever like to come and see the sort of place where days like this happen, get in touch and we would love to show you around.
Dashing Ducks
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