Pink Wax Flower: our 2027 Family Day Care Compliance Diary cover, and 3 ways to explore it with children

Meet Eriostemon australasius, the pink wax flower behind the cover colour of our 2027 Family Day Care Compliance Diary, plus three easy EYLF-linked nature-play ideas for your FDC day.

Leona Butler Updated 24 Jul, 2026

Pink Wax Flower native flora colour card for the 2027 Family Day Care Compliance Diary, featuring Eriostemon australasius, the pink wax flower

Leona Butler Director and Founder at Butler Diaries

Butler Diaries is the Sunshine Coast–based business behind Australia's most trusted range of programming, reflection and compliance resources for the early childhood education and care sector. Drawing on five years as a family day care educator and more than two decades designing for educational institutions, training organisations and industry conferences, Leona built Butler Diaries to bridge a gap she felt firsthand: the lack of practical, well-designed tools that help educators meet the NQS and EYLF without drowning in paperwork. Her work blends sector knowledge with her experience and qualifications – a combination that has shaped a solution now used by more than 35,000 services and educators across Australia.

Each of our 2027 cover colours is named after an Australian native plant. The Family Day Care Compliance Diary wears Pink Wax Flower, and here is a little about it, plus three easy ways to explore it with your children.

Meet the Pink Wax Flower

Eriostemon australasius is a heathland shrub from the sandstone country of New South Wales and southern Queensland. In late winter and early spring, while much of the bush still looks asleep, it covers itself in waxy, five-petalled pink stars.

We chose it for the Family Day Care diary because FDC educators work the same quiet magic, small home-scale settings that suddenly light up with something beautiful.

Pink Wax Flower native flora colour card for the 2027 Family Day Care Compliance Diary, featuring Eriostemon australasius, the pink wax flower

Bring it into your program

Three simple experiences, each with a link to the EYLF so you can drop it straight into your planning.

1. Wax-resist petals

Draw big five-petalled flowers in white or pink crayon, pressing hard, then brush watery paint over the top and watch the waxy petals appear like magic. Talk about why the flower's real petals feel waxy too.

EYLF: Outcome 5 (children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media).

2. The touch collection

Gather leaves and petals on a walk, then sort them by feel: waxy, furry, rough, papery. A shoebox with divided sections makes a beautiful ongoing texture museum for your FDC space.

EYLF: Outcome 4 (children develop skills such as sorting and categorising).

3. What flowers in winter?

Take a cold-morning walk and hunt for anything blooming. Wonder together why some plants flower when everything else waits for spring, and keep a tally through the seasons.

EYLF: Outcome 2 (children observe and respond to the natural world and its cycles).

Notice and document

As the children explore, jot down their questions, theories and discoveries alongside your daily records in the Family Day Care Compliance Diary. That is the Butler Method in action, planning from real interest and making the learning visible.