Claire’s mum joked that she loved preschool so much, she went back into it. Photo: Supplied.
A Cootamundra early childhood educator has taken home the Wagga Wagga & Riverina Region Educator Award, and is in the running for the 2025 Educator of the Year Award.
Claire Knewstub had always wanted to work with children.
“My mother says I loved preschool so much that I always wanted to go back to preschool,” she joked.
After finishing her studies at Charles Sturt University, her days became filled with the laughter of children.
The 39-year-old said her favourite part about being an early childhood educator was being that first person to show kids how the world worked.
“Every day here is different,” she said.
“We’ve been exploring maps recently, because one of the children are very interested in drawing maps.
“We were reading a book, and it had all different kinds of maps, including constellation maps.
“And one of the children actually knew exactly what that was, that it’s a group of stars that make a picture, before we even read the book, at four years old.”
She finds it reassuring that the next generation has a lot of interests and knowledge on different topics.
But sometimes, the children flip the script on her.
“Sometimes they have passions about things,” she said.
“Then they’ll teach me something that I don’t even know sometimes.
“And that’s pretty amazing when they can do that.”
Claire runs her own family day care in Cootamundra, and has been a teacher for 21 years.
When she’s not showing children the ropes, she can be found horse riding with her two children, who are in primary and high school.
Even after more than two decades in the industry, Mrs Knewstub’s passion for teaching hasn’t faded.
“I’ve worked in several childcare industries,” she said.
“I think family day care is quite a valuable learning environment for children, because it’s such a small group of children.
“We only have four children a day. So the relationships that we build are very different to the ones when you’ve got 20 kids a day.”
Being in such a small environment has given her the opportunity to build more intimate and meaningful relationships with the children.
“You can have that more one-on-one time with the children,” she said.
“Some of these children I’ve had from when they were eight months old. Now they’re getting ready to go to school next year.”
While she’ll be sad to see them go, she knows there’ll be more children looking to fill their spots.
“It will be a sad year at the end of this year, because they’ve been with me since the beginning,” she said.
“But there’s always new children, and they’ve all got siblings!”
Claire Knewstub was announced as the Wagga Wagga & Riverina winner in the National Family Day Care Awards.
As a regional award winner she is in the running to be named a national finalist for the 2025 Educator of the Year Award, which will be announced on 25 October in Melbourne.
