Director Chloe Daly said it was a good week of activities focussing on the theme, with the pre-schoolers learning the truth of the country’s colonial past, discussing at a pre-school level what happened, why it happened and the importance of it not recurring.

A reconciliation barbecue was held on Tuesday with invitations extended to pre-school families as well as the Aboriginal Playgroup, Tenterfield Social Development Committee clients, Armajun families and local elders.

Ms Daly said there was a great turnout to the barbecue including families who hadn’t visited the pre-school before and enjoyed the opportunity to check out the facility and play with all the toys.

A Welcome to Country was extended to the guests (and is recited each morning at the centre), before a combined storytime, lunch and play session.

Mundarra Cutmore and Lucas Hill even built a firepit out of blocks and performed the emu dance for all their peers

It was a whole week of dot painting, indigenous stories and art, culminating on Friday with everyone wearing purple and establishing a purple-flowering crowea exalata native in the centre’s bush tucker garden.

Then everyone symbolically said ‘sorry’ in unison.

All the children had a hand in the planting and Ms Daly is looking forward to watching the shrub grow, much like the inclusiveness of the pre-school.

She said despite their tender age the reconciliation message seemed to sink in with the children, who were a bit taken aback that such things could happen.

As the generation of the future, Ms Daly said some of the children were quite ready to volunteer to shoulder the responsibility of not allowing circumstances like the Stolen Generation to happen again.

“They liked the responsibility (to not repeat past mistakes), and one boy put up his hand and said ‘I’m not going to do that’.

“We had to be honest with them and make it clear that it wasn’t just a dress-up day, and to understand what it was all about.”