Archival treasure unearthed from SDN Mosman
The Sydney Day Nursery and Nursery Schools Association opened the Mosman Nursery School on 19 May 1944. To learn more about the history of SDN Mosman, check out our newly-updated Beginnings of SDN Mosman flyer here.
To acknowledge the upcoming 80th anniversary of SDN Mosman, Ben is sharing this archival treasure with our village.
Olivia Liva, our Early Childhood Content Specialist and former Centre Director, says Nancy Stern’s “Group Record Book” prefigures the policies and procedures our ECEC centres must publish today as per regulation.
“Seeing the record-keeping process from 60 years ago was fascinating. A lot has changed and conversely not much has changed in that time. It was so interesting to see what things were considered important to record.
"It was so interesting to see what things were considered important to record. For example, there were child profiles with information about the child and their home life that might help the educator to understand the child. They recorded if the child lived in a house or flat and it seemed to indicate that the children who lived in flats needed more time to play at the centre.”
The Mosman Nursery School Group Record Book of 1963-1964 is a well-preserved, meticulously handwritten handbook that is divided into four sections:
Section 1: Particulars of Nursery School, standards and procedures
- Index
- Children's full names, numbers, and symbols (full days and half days)
- Daily programme plan for “Tops”
- Duties for teachers, helpers, students
- Wash time procedure
- Lunchtime procedure
- Play activity procedures
- Menus for North Sydney and Mosman Nursery School (14 - 24 January [1964])
Section 2: Equipment
Section 3: Group work
- Themes, stories - told, stories - book, stories - felt board,
- Picture talk, treasure bag, poetry, finger plays, dramatisation,
- Nature, natural science, spontaneous nature experience
- New play activities, miscellaneous, songs introduced and known, music and movement
Section 4: Children
- Mosman “Tops” children's (full names and dates of birth)
- Birthdays calendar
- Children's groupings (student and teacher)
- Case histories: full day children (address, date of birth, full names, parents' occupations, sisters and brothers, living arrangements (e.g. house, flat, garden, yard, grandparents), behavioural difficulties (e.g. needs a lot of activities, needs to be encouraged, shy), telephone numbers, health [(e.g. food allergies) other info (e.g. languages spoken)].
- Case histories half day children.
- Children who have left, case histories.
Pages from Nancy Stern’s Group Record Book are reproduced below:
