Play School 50-year celebrations reach Toowoomba
A LITTLE known fact of the iconic ABC children's show Play School, is that far from the actors ad-libbing to camera, the program is heavily scripted.
Play School is celebrating 50 years of performing to Australia's young ones and visited Toowoomba's Cobb & Co Museum yesterday for a dress up party.
The show's longest serving presenter Andrew McFarlane attended the day to read stories to and mix with children and their families.
"Play School is very scripted, it's very disciplined because we're dealing with early learning," Mr McFarlane explained.
"We have early learning specialists who work on the script, especially when we're dealing with counting and identifying colours and things like that.
"It's important that we just can't make things up but we do try to be as spontaneous as possible.
"A lot of research goes into it."
One of Australia's best known actors, Mr McFarlane has been presenting Play School since 2000 and still enjoys doing the show.
"It's so magical, the show is iconic," he said.
"We try to relate to children in their own world.
"We never talk down to them."
Some of the shows best loved characters such as Big Ted, Little Ted, Humpty and Jemima also attended the day's activities enjoyed by a large crowd with a lot of children dressing up in various costumes to take part.
