I savour this little window of time three times a week to talk about her day.

Sometimes she has made a new friend at preschool, other times she’s missing one; once she met a black dog called Milo who taught her how to talk to dogs in the good and proper way (“When you meet a new dog, let the new dog sniff the back of your hand first! Got it!!”). Got it.

We talk about how lucky she is to learn about all this stuff even before she starts Big School.

She knows I grew up miles from town on a sheep station and did not go to preschool way back then.

“You weren’t lucky enough to go to preschool because you lived on a farm,” she reminds me at least twice a week.

I reply: “I missed preschool but I learnt everything there is to know about sheep and I was a fair to average rouseabout!” She’s not convinced this trumps finger painting, playing in the yard and drawing bugs and mini beasts.

When she started preschool as a three-year-old last year my husband and I worried it would be a big adjustment for her since she’d never been to childcare.

Once through the gate though she soon spotted the sandpit and the giant container of water with tap access. She was as happy as a preschooler in MUD!

She quickly bonded with the friendly preschool teachers, who through their creative genius and general cleverness made the transition as smooth as possible.

Our preschooler learnt to put her lunch box in the class fridge, line up her drink bottle with the others and hang up her hand towel. Even at home she washes her hands for as long as it takes to sing the preschool song: “Wash Your Dirty Hands, Rub and Scrub and Rub and Scrub ...” Pray you don’t need to make a hasty exit from the house because this verse stops for no-one!

Mid-year we received an extensive and detailed progress report on her; the individual feedback, along with pages of photos, personal quotes and descriptions, would have been a monumental task for the teachers. We got a similarly detailed report again mid-year this year with insightful and valuable feedback on her handwriting, socialisation, strengths and fears.

In a little over 20 months our youngest has grown in many ways, some without doubt due to her preschool experience.

Now community preschools in NSW are struggling to stay afloat with a preschool funding model, which is simply not up to the job. 

Only two-thirds of four-year-olds attend preschool in NSW in the year before they start school compared with 100 per cent of their peers over the border in Victoria.

NSW preschools enrol three-year-olds to fill their vacancies and keep their fees down but the funding model is penalising them for doing so. Not only is the NSW government refusing to fund some three-year-olds, it's effectively taxing preschools for those enrolments. 

Meanwhile research the world over shows dollars spent on early education are a financially sound investment in the future.

Both our daughters will be lucky enough to have two years of preschool before starting school. They were and will be socially, academically, physically and mentally prepared as possible for the transition.

Every kid in NSW should have access to a preschool education.

Luck, I believe, should never come into it!