Train excursion to mark Playcentre Week

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33601, 1 August 1974, Page 18

Train excursion to mark Playcentre Week

More than 1000 preschool children will leave Christchurch next Monday on a special excursion train to Waikari to mark the beginning of New Zealand Playcentre Week. The purpose of the week —held throughout New Zealand every two years—is to draw attention to the importance of pre-school education.

The publicity officer of the Canterbury Playcentre Association (Mrs A. Turnbull) said yesterday that it was now universally accepted that children learn through play and that pre-school experience provided children with the opportunity for all kinds of play which significantly helped their all-round personality development, social adjustment, and physical and intellectual skills. The New Zealand playcentre movement now provides 40 per cent of preschool education through almost 700 playcentres, 80 of which serve 3000 children in Canterbury and Westland. To start a playcentre, interested parents find a suitable meeting place and obtain approval to run the organisation from the Department of Education. Money to

run the playcentres is obtained by parents and from Government grants. The New Zealand playcentre movement began in Wellington and Christchurch in 1941 as a way of meeting the needs of mothers whose husbands were on war service overseas.