Targeted Intervention That Makes a BIG Difference
Our School Readiness Program in Penrith provides personalised support for children aged 4–8 who may need some extra help to prepare for school, transition to Kindergarten or participate successfully in the early years of school.
Perhaps your child is struggling to follow instructions, communicate what they need, concentrate, manage frustration, interact with other children or develop early literacy and numeracy skills.
Or perhaps something just isn’t clicking, and you’re not quite sure why.
You don’t need to know exactly what your child needs before contacting us.
Start with a free consultation and we’ll help you work out the next step.
Is Your Child Ready for School?
School readiness is about much more than knowing letters, numbers, colours and shapes.
Children also need to manage the many demands of a school day. For example, they need to listen and respond to instructions, communicate their needs, participate in activities, cope when things don’t go to plan and begin developing independence.
For some children, these skills develop relatively easily. However, others benefit from more targeted and individual support.
Our school readiness support in Penrith may help children who experience difficulty with:
- communication and understanding instructions
- social interaction and participating with others
- emotional regulation and managing frustration
- attention, concentration and completing activities
- independence and self-management
- planning, organisation and executive functioning
- early literacy and numeracy
- fine and gross motor participation
- confidence in learning and trying new things
- adjusting to routines, expectations and change.
Foundation allows us to identify which areas are most important for your child, rather than working from a one-size-fits-all school readiness program.
How Our School Readiness Program Works
Every child starts in a different place. Therefore, Foundation begins by getting to know your child and understanding their individual strengths, challenges and support needs.
Our pathway is simple:
Free Consultation → Foundation Start → Individual Support → Progress Monitoring → Be School Ready Report
From there, we can build a program around the skills your child actually needs.
Some children may benefit from a short period of targeted school readiness support before starting Kindergarten. Others may require ongoing early learning support as they transition into school or targeted support as they start and continue infant school.
The frequency and duration of support can be adjusted according to your child’s individual needs.
Foundation Start – Begin With a Clear Plan
$345
Foundation Start gives us time to get to know your child before recommending ongoing programming.
It includes:
Free Parent/Carer Consultation
Talk with us about your concerns, your child’s strengths, their current learning environment and what you would like them to be able to do more independently.
Foundation Session 1 – 60 minutes
Your child’s first individual session allows us to begin building rapport while observing how they communicate, learn, respond to instructions and participate in activities.
Foundation Session 2 – 60 minutes
We continue our observations while introducing activities targeted towards the areas identified through your consultation and first session.
Foundation Program of Support (POS)
We bring together information from your parent questionnaire, consultation and your child’s sessions to establish their starting point and priorities.
Their Program of Support identifies individual goals, skill areas and recommended programming so everyone has a clear direction moving forward. This includes a report outlining your POS.
Foundation Start: $345
Individual School Readiness Support
Foundation 1:1
Following Foundation Start, children can continue with individual school readiness and early learning support based on their Program of Support.
Sessions are purposeful, but they don’t have to look like school.
Depending on your child’s goals, a Foundation session might include games, creative activities, movement, early literacy or numeracy, problem-solving, conversation, role play or practical activities.
Importantly, the activity is the vehicle for developing the skill.
For example, we might use a game to practise turn-taking and managing disappointment, a creative project to develop planning and fine motor skills, or an early learning activity to build attention, confidence and persistence.
This allows children to develop skills through activities that are engaging and meaningful to them.
More Intensive Foundation Support
Some children require more than a weekly session.
They may have multiple areas of difficulty, be approaching school with significant support needs, require closer progress monitoring or need greater collaboration between Unity Studios, their family and other people supporting them.
Foundation Plus
Foundation Plus provides additional non-face-to-face programming and oversight, including structured monitoring of your child’s progress, review of their goals and additional parent/carer liaison.
This allows us to look beyond individual sessions and consider how your child’s skills and support needs are changing over time.
We’ll discuss whether Foundation Plus is appropriate for your child rather than automatically adding it to every Foundation program.
Be School Ready Assessment & Report
Understand Where They Started and How Far They’ve Come
Our Be School Ready process helps families understand their child’s skills, progress and ongoing support needs.
At the beginning of programming, parents or carers complete a comprehensive questionnaire about their child’s current abilities across key areas of school readiness and everyday functioning.
Throughout Foundation, our mentors document observations, strategies, barriers and progress within sessions.
Later, parents complete the questionnaire again. This allows us to compare your child’s starting point with their current functioning and consider the progress they have made.
Be School Ready Report – $460
The comprehensive report includes up to four hours of review, analysis and report preparation.
It can document:
- your child’s strengths and current abilities
- their original areas of difficulty
- progress observed during Foundation
- skills they can complete independently
- areas where they continue to require prompting or support
- strategies that have helped
- ongoing functional or learning barriers
- recommendations for continued support.
This can provide useful information for families as their child transitions to school or when discussing their support needs with teachers and other professionals.
Preschool to Kindergarten Transition Support
Starting school is a significant transition.
For some children, additional preparation can make the expectations of Kindergarten feel much more manageable.
Foundation can specifically target skills your child may need for their preschool to school transition, such as following multi-step instructions, asking for help, completing an activity, managing transitions, participating alongside other children and coping when something unexpected happens.
We can also work on early learning skills where these are creating barriers to participation or confidence.
The goal isn’t for your child to arrive at Kindergarten knowing everything.
Instead, we want them to have stronger skills and strategies to participate, learn, communicate and ask for support when they need it.
Does My Child Need a Diagnosis?
No.
Foundation is available to children who need additional school readiness or early learning support, whether or not they have a diagnosed disability or developmental condition.
Families often know that their child is finding something difficult long before they have a formal diagnosis and sometimes there will never be one.
A lack of diagnosis doesn’t make the difficulty disappear.
Our focus is on understanding what your child can currently do, what they find difficult and what skills we can help them develop.
School Readiness Support for NDIS Participants
Children with an NDIS plan may be able to access Foundation programming through Uability, Unity Studios’ disability-specific capacity-building service.
Where Uability is appropriate, additional requirements may apply to establish disability-specific programming, align supports with NDIS goals, complete required documentation and monitor functional outcomes.
If your child is already attending Foundation privately and later receives appropriate NDIS funding, we can discuss whether their existing Foundation programming can transition into Uability.
What About Busy Bees?
Busy Bees has been our small-group early learning and school readiness program.
For now, our focus is on providing individual Foundation support, allowing programming to be much more closely matched to each child’s needs.
As our Foundation community grows, small-group opportunities may be offered for children who would benefit from practising particular skills alongside peers.
This means groups can be created around the needs of the children participating, rather than expecting every child to fit the same program.
School Readiness Support in Penrith, Start With a Conversation
If you’re concerned about your child’s readiness for school, early learning or participation, you don’t need to work out the solution before contacting us.
Tell us what you’re noticing.
We’ll talk about what your child is finding difficult, what they’re doing well and what you would like to see change.
From there, we can determine whether Foundation is the right next step.
Start with a free, no-obligation consultation.
Unity Studios
Penrith NSW
Where Education & Creativity Unite.