What Melbourne Looks Like Through Children’s Eyes

At Gowrie Docklands Kindergarten (GDK), children from one group had begun building their own Melbourne landscape, and it became the starting point for another group’s exploration of what Melbourne means to them.

The classroom is shared between two groups: Betayil Group 1 and Betayil Group 2, which run on different days. Children from Group 1 had created a landscape of Melbourne which the children from Group 2 had noticed, sparking their curiosity straight away and wanting to add to it.

The community at GDK is multicultural, with children from many different countries and backgrounds. A student currently undertaking placement at GDK saw an opportunity in the unfinished landscape by encouraging the children to think about how they see Melbourne as home, and what they notice about the city around them. The landscape gave them a natural starting point, with educators following the children’s interest from there.

The children began sharing their own experiences of the city. One child said, “I go to shop, I go to play, I go to the zoo,” and decided the landscape needed a zoo. Another had been noticing the sights around Docklands. “I see Docklands, I see dolphins, I see the wheel. I want to make the rainbow wheel,” she said, and set to work. A third thought about the places she visits most. “I’m making a swimming pool, and next, I want to make our school.”

The children worked on the landscape over three days, picking it up again each morning and building on what they’d added the day before. Their ideas kept developing as they noticed what the other children had created and thought of new things to contribute. The educators provided cardboard in different shapes and textures, cardboard rolls, dried leaves, bottle caps, plasticine, popsicle sticks, and scrap fabric. Cardboard rolls became tree trunks. Bottle caps worked just as well as car wheels, and scraps of blue fabric turned into a flowing river.

“What stood out for me as their teacher was how much the children noticed from their own everyday experiences,” says Jeslin, ECT in Betayil Group 2. “Children who travelled in cars wanted to add cars, and children who lived in apartments wanted to make apartments, painting them the same colour as their own homes.”

“The children found their own way to solve problems with the materials available to them,” she continues. “What surprised me most was how much of their own lives came through in what they built.”

Through the project, the children practised recalling their experiences and describing the places that matter to them. They also worked through planning, negotiating, and decision-making as they figured out which materials could represent their ideas. The landscape itself has grown too large to display for families, but the team have written up a reflection in their classroom reflection book, available for parents to read. As a team, they’re now thinking about extending the project by connecting it to Country, encouraging the children to consider what the land may have looked like before the buildings they know today.

Children at GDK have explored their relationship with the local area before. In Five ways to build community, another group at GDK worked through what it means to make their presence known along the NewQuay Promenade, finding their own ways to show the local community that the waterfront matters to them too.