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According to an agreement between the Melbourne City Council and the Education Department, the Council built a largish annexe to the Infant Department at Pigdon Street, while the Education Department supplied the teachers3. The Centre was open to children under the age of four and a half. Intent on representing a cross-section of the community, the kindergarten only accepted children recommended by the Health Department Medical Officers; the school staff had no say in the selection.
Kindergarten
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Classes at Pigdon Street, c.
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1948-9.
Few enrolment records for the kindergarten have survived, but we do know that in 1940, twenty children were enrolled in the Nursery Class under the care of Miss Bennett, and another 34 attended kindergarten under the care of Miss Frier. By 1949, enrolments in the Nursery School had increased to fifty4. A nursing sister was also in attendance. Marjorie, who was a student in the late 1930s, remembers Sister Smith, ‘an older woman with white hair, rather tall and slim. She was kind and friendly and we were not in awe of her or scared of her.’ When Marjorie’s own children attended the Health Centre in the 1950s, Marjorie and other mothers assisted the staff with morning lunches.
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The curriculum was the same as that taught in Victorian primary schools. It fitted the Department’s wish that partially blind children should, whenever possible, return to normal classrooms to continue their education17. ” Some of the readers used included Richard Jefferies’ Brook Folk, R. L. Stevenson’s A Night Among the Pines and Treasure Island, Jerome K. Jerome’s Packing and Coal-Bay, The Outlaw Horse and other animal stories, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.18 Clay modelling, drawing, listening to music and spelling based on phonetic exercises were regular aspects of the day’s work. Particular attention was paid to elocution and speech, concentrating on proper ‘vowel-sounds, which Miss Checcucci believed would help to raise the children’s self-esteem.” The Physical Education Department devised special exercises for the children. 20
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