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Shirley Hartman knows how important it is for kids to connect with nature.

Murray Bridge Preschool Kindergarten’s director has made it a focus of her first year in the job.

Her vision was realised last Monday with the opening of a new play space at the kindy, one featuring a bike track, sandpit, water pump and a bridge over a little creek.

Senator Marielle Smith did the honours, snipping a ribbon after the kindy’s children sang and danced to the Wombat Wobble.

Early childhood education was something she was passionate about, too, she said: “the most important things aren’t year 11 and 12, they’re the things that are happening right now”.

The space was built by River Landscapes using funding which had been allocated by the Department for Education last year.

Forty-one children attend the kindy for two days each week, split into two groups – nori and ponde – named for animals important to Murray Bridge’s traditional owners, the Ngarrindjeri people.