Day-Nursery Growth Beyond Expectations

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 2

Day-Nursery Growth Beyond Expectations

Her love for children, leading to her decision 11 years ago to undertake the daily care of a few children outside her own family, has had a far-reaching effect for a Christchurch woman, Mrs Margaret Wright, and her husband, Mr Owen Wright.

So great was the growth of their daynursery “family,” that at the end of last year the Wrights were obliged to expand their premises. They bought the two-storey house next door, knocked down the dividing fence and made the gardens one.

Now the Avalon Day Nursery, believed by the Wrights to be the most extensive private day-nursery in Christchurch, and perhaps in New Zealand, is a full-time job for them both and two staff. Thirty or more children aged from two years to five years can be accommodated. Today there will be an “open afternoon” at Avalon between 1 p.m. and 3 pm. to give parents, relatives and friends of the nursery an opportunity to see and inspect improvements that have been made.

Most of the work of adapting the new house for the nursery has been done by Mr and Mrs Wright themselves. A new fire-escape, smokeproof doors, a toilet block end a small isolation room in case of sickness are some of the additions.

Avalon is as safe, hygienic, bright and comfortable as planning can make it; it is also a children’s delight. Out in the half-acre garden the children can take makebelieve rides in a walk-in Noddy, bus, make purchases

at Lollypop Shop, explore Mother Hubbard’s outsize shoe, and have realistic conversations on real, if oldfashioned, telephones set up at just the right height for nursery-size folk. On the walls round the garden are a host of well-known characters, from HumptyDumpty and Pinocchio to the more up-to-date, but no less lovable Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny. Apple Time Cut from tin and brightly painted, the figures are the work of Mr Wright who, as well as helping with meals and washing-up during the week, is also the versatile “handyman” of Avalon. He made the out-door toys, and much of the children’s furniture and designed the small folding beds which fasten flat against the walls when not in use. He takes movie films of special events at the nursery, and later shows these for the children. The big lawn and garden is his concern; and he is also the central figure each afternoon at “apple time,” when he appears with a bowl-full of windfall apples from the nursery’s own trees. Qualified Supervision Mrs Wright herself i? a qualified play centre supervisor, having completed a course some years ago. She has two children of her own. The younger of them, four-year-old Kathy Lee, does the simple lessons given to the other children. Action songs to music, and dressing up, are favourite activities in the playrooms and garden. The experience a child gains before it goes to school is of great importance, Mrs Wright believes. “I believe it is essential for a child to go to a pre-school centre before he goes to school,” she said. Such experience broadened children’s horizons, helped make them readier for school, and made less difficult the big step from home to school.