All groups run at various times throughout the year and are generally aligned to school term dates. Numbers are limited, so sign up early to reduce disappointment. All groups can be funded privately or through NDIS plans, where it relates to your or your child's goals.
Seedlings
Seedlings is a parent-child playgroup for children under four focusing on developing social communication and emotional regulation. Each group will reflect participating children’s individual therapeutic goals through a variety of child-led play experiences. Facilitated by qualified and experienced practitioners, the group provides opportunities for children to develop and practice the skills required for positive social interactions; communication, play skills and regulation. Small group sizes promote quality interactions with peers in a supportive environment while providing social networking opportunities for parents and carers.
Sprouts
Sprouts is a parent-child playgroup with focus on school readiness and transitions to kindergarten and beyond. This group is facilitated by our qualified and experienced practitioners. Using the DIR/Floortime therapy approach, this group focuses on developmentally appropriate regulation, engagement, communication, problem-solving and development of symbolic play. This group aims to promote and upskill children to calm and concentrate, think, problem-solve and reason. This group integrates all aspects of a child’s development and learning including physical, emotional, social, creative and cognitive. This program promotes school readiness and movement to school settings with focus on transition routines, socialization, building and practicing play ideas to share in peer play settings.
Social explorers + social problem solvers
Social Explorers is for children aged 4 (kindergarten) – 7 years. ‘The ‘Social Explorers’ social skills group is part of the We Thinkers! series from Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking concept. It helps children build foundational social skills through stories and play. It supports children to improve their social competencies. The program aims to support children to better understand themselves and others, develop self-awareness, perspective taking, social problem solving and support their social-emotional learning, relationship building and academic learning.
Social Problem Solvers is for graduates of Social Explorers and delves deeper into how to figure out the social clues to share space, interact, and regulate emotions. We use the term “social executive functioning” to discuss that we are helping children learn to better self-regulate their behaviour and emotions when sharing space or interacting with others. Social executive functioning is used in the classroom when sitting in a group to learn, it’s used when running onto the playground to play with others, and kids use it to figure out how to join a play group that’s pretending to be pirates. It involves surveying a social situation, understanding what the group is doing, considering others’ ideas, having enough flexibility (in thoughts and behaviour) to ride out the shifts and changes that may occur, negotiating roles, turns, or positions, and self-regulating to keep emotions, actions and reactions under control when problems arise. Social Problem Solvers breaks down these complex concepts into smaller, teachable segments that kids can understand and presents them in a step-by-step manner. Both groups run for 10 week over a school term.
Circle of security parent coaching
tailored for parents of children with unique needs
At times all parents feel lost or without a clue about what our child might need from us. Imagine what it might feel like if you were able to make sense of what your child was really asking from you. The Circle of Security® Parenting™ program is based on decades of research about how secure parent-child relationships can be supported and strengthened. Our facilitators come with extensive experience in the early years disability sector and will tailor this program to reflect, understand and respond to your own child's personal connection cues for secure attachment and in turn improved behaviour.
Using the COS-P model developed by the Circle of Security originators, our trained Facilitators work with parents and care-givers to help them to:
Understand their child’s emotional world by learning to read emotional needs
Support their child’s ability to successfully manage emotions
Enhance the development of their child's self esteem
Honour the innate wisdom and desire for their child to be secure