Birdie’s Tree comes to the Blue Mountains to help children cope with natural disasters

The Birdie’s Tree series, familiar to many in early childhood education and care (ECEC) services for its role in supporting children to work through any traumatic or uncomfortable feelings arising from living through natural disasters, is now available to children in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales. 

Birdie’s Tree is a series of picture books, puppets and animations which help young children to prepare for, and cope with, natural disasters as well as other disruptive events like sickness.

From early June the series of 12 storybooks and puppets will be supplied to Blue Mountains’ primary schools, early childhood centres and Blue Mountains libraries courtesy of the Blue Mountains City Council. This project was funded by the NSW Government’s Bushfire Community Recovery and Resilience grant. 

“Too often young children are left out of the conversation when individuals and services think about how to best prepare for emergency situations,” said Blue Mountains Mayor, Cr Mark Greenhill. 

“So resources like Birdie’s Tree are a wonderful way to gently and positively let children become familiar with these concepts so they can be reassured that their families, pets and homes will remain safe despite these challenging situations.” 

The Birdie’s Tree resources cover a broad range of topics such as managing floods, storms, cyclones, droughts and bushfires and other significant events like the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The stories will be performed during Storytime in Blue Mountains Libraries throughout the July school holidays in conjunction with the ‘Pillowcase Project’ emergency preparedness workshops, which will be presented to young audiences by Red Cross Emergency Services volunteers.

The Birdie’s Tree resources are being launched at two afternoon tea events where primary school and early childhood educators have been invited to attend to learn more about the storybooks and additional training opportunities that will be available in the coming months.  

Learn more about the Birdie series here.