Warami (Hello) 2025
The new school year seems to have come around faster than ever! The Wingaru team are getting back into the swing of things and can already tell it is going to be an exciting year full of great projects, new resources and collaborations. As we get into our planning for the year, we have been reflecting on 2024 and I thought I would share some of the wins we had.
Supporting Subscribers
We continued to work with some amazing schools and teachers who are working hard to bring authentic Aboriginal perspectives into their classrooms. The Wingaru Kids Platform supported over 6500 teachers and close to 100,000 students this year and we are looking forward to welcoming another 23 schools as the 2025 school year starts. The team have been busy working on some new lessons that will be available in term 1 - Animal tracks, Traditional First Nations games and new reconciliation lessons are just some of the exciting knowledge we are exploring and will be sharing this term. We have also started working on our NAIDOC resources so keep an eye out for them too. Subscriber wall planners will ship over the next couple of weeks so keep an eye on the mail as school begins.
If you are not yet a subscriber and are looking for support with Aboriginal perspectives, we have a range of flexible subscription options so check out our free trial and have a yarn with Bek to see if we are a good fit for your classroom.
School Educator Visits
Some of our educators have also been busy bringing culture into schools in the Sydney area and sharing tools, artefacts, art, language and story with kids and teachers from all over Sydney. We are excited to be able to visit more schools and early learning centres this year so if you are looking for something meaningful and engaging reach out - term 1 is filling fast!.
Resource Development
We also continued to develop our collection of games and physical resources, adding new resources for NAIDOC as well as two new games - Midden and Father Emu. I am honestly blown away by the response to these games - both from teachers and early learning educators but also families who are embracing learning about Aboriginal culture. But the best response has been from kids - nothing beats seeing kids play with the games and hearing the yarns as kids explore the concepts. I cannot wait to see what this generation of kids do as adults! We also have new teacher tools in store so head over and check out our new stamps, merit certificates and lanyard designs.
Another resource highlight for me this year was the publication of our first book - Warami Midigar. When we sat down to write this book we felt strongly that Dharug should be the only language on the page and the response tells us we were right. It is so powerful to see my traditional language front and centre. The work the language speakers are doing to revive language is nothing short of amazing and working with them on the book taught me so much. We have some more Dharug language resources coming in 2025 - some more cards and another book so keep an eye out if you are looking for some new language tools.
Along with some new Dharug resources hitting the store in the next few weeks are some other new resources - more research cards, some new Didge Ya Know? fact cards, and classroom posters. Sign up to our newsletter so you don’t miss these deadly releases!
Collaborations and Partnerships
Collaborations and partnerships are a big part of what we do and the team have worked with some amazing organisations in 2024 and are looking forward to continuing these partnerships in 2025. We teamed up with Deadly Science again to create another deadly Science Week Resource as well as a few other must have classroom tools - head over to the Deadly Science website to check out what they have on offer. We also explored Dharug Country with SBS, continuing our relationship with their amazing education team and we created some pretty exciting resources for the Preschool Outcomes Measure project being led by ACER, Ninti One and Good Start.
We got to know some of the Ninti One team and are looking forward to working with them more in 2025 and are continuing the work we have been doing with 3 Bridges to support cultural safety in the Out of School Hours Care sector. The Aunties have been busy delivering cultural awareness training to 32 organisations across a broad range of industries in 2024 with 2025 sessions starting in February.
We continued to work with Disney as the embed cultural safety and I have also loved working with Caprice Clothing and Target (Kmart Group) on a new product launch featuring artwork from the ever amazing Warlukurlangu Artists - these are the type of projects that have impact and it is always so nice to work with teams who put cultural safety first, listen to mob and make space for our voices. This is small glimpse into the diversity of projects we get to work on throughout the year and why we love what we do highlights that there is space for respectful engagement with Aboriginal culture and people in every aspect of life and it is so great to see so many people making it a priority.
Our RAP team is proud to have supported a number of organisations with their RAP’s and expanding Aboriginal education opportunities across a number of workplaces. In 2025, we are expanding the RAP team so if you need support with a RAP or workplace education please reach out and see if we are the right fit for you.
Free 2025 Calendar
I’d love to hear how your planning for 2025 is going. To help you plan for Key First Nations events we have our annual free calendar of events available for download here. Aunty Cynthia Younie-O’Brien’s artwork looks spectacular on the calendar as always! If you are a subscriber, don’t forget to check the additional resources section of your dashboard to access our classroom decor - ready for printing as you need!
Download our 2025 calendar here.