Zig-Zag Wattle: our Children's Voices Diary cover, and 3 ways to explore it with children
Meet Acacia macradenia, the zig-zag wattle on our Children's Voices Diary, plus three easy EYLF-linked ideas that put children's own ideas first.
Each of our 2027 covers is named after an Australian native plant. The Children's Voices Diary wears Zig-Zag Wattle, and here is a little about it, plus three easy ways to explore it with your children.
Meet the Zig-Zag Wattle
Acacia macradenia comes from central Queensland, and it grows exactly the way its name promises: the stems bend sharply left, then right, then left again between the leaves, arching over and dripping with golden pom-pom flowers in winter.
We chose it for the Children's Voices Diary because this book belongs to the children, and children's thinking rarely travels in straight lines. A plant that zig-zags its own way up seemed exactly right.
Bring it into your program
Three simple experiences, each with a link to the EYLF, and each one led by the children's own choices.
1. Lines that tell my day
Show the zig-zag stems, then invite children to draw their day as a single line: zig for busy bits, long and smooth for calm bits, loops for the fun. Let them narrate their line to you, and scribe their words beside it.
EYLF: Outcome 5 (children use drawing and symbols to represent and share their thinking).
2. Golden pom-poms
Yellow pom-poms, cotton balls, paint dabbed with fingers, however each child chooses, build wattle branches on paper with real zig-zag sticks glued down first. Same materials, thirteen different wattles, every one right.
EYLF: Outcome 4 (children choose their own materials and methods) and Outcome 1 (confidence in their own ideas).
3. The zig-zag path
Hand over the chalk and let the children design a giant zig-zag obstacle path in the yard, their rules, their route, their tests for the grown-ups who have to follow it.
EYLF: Outcome 1 (children have a strong sense of identity and agency).
Notice and document
The best part: with the Children's Voices Diary, the children do the documenting themselves, their drawings, their words, their way. Genuine children's voices, visible in your program.
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