Our high expectations for children promote their ability to reach their full potential ensuring a smoother transition into primary school. Your child’s independence will grow immensely during their time at Five Senses Childcare through simple daily tasks but more so during their undertaking of our internally written, personalised school readiness program. School readiness tasks are comprehensive structured activities to prepare children for structured learning.

We take careful record of children’s development during their time here, through our portfolio program, which is sent home upon graduation. This portfolio is a compilation of journals, artworks observations and reflections of your child from their very first day up until their last, prepared by the child’s designated focus teacher.

Our School Readiness Program checklist and the NSW ‘Transition to school Statements’ allows educators, teachers, and parents to assess a child’s readiness for primary school. Our school readiness program promotes learning outcomes and develops children in the following areas:

• Pre-Reading and Writing skills Our school readiness program includes a focus on letters of the alphabet and the sounds letters make, better known as Phonics. Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of an alphabetic language by developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them.
• Language and Communication skills These skills are critical prerequisites for school. Children need to be able to follow instructions and understand what is said to them. They need to be able to communicate their needs and to be understood. They need to be able to deal with structured content and more formal learning environments.
• Social and Emotional Skills A visit to the local primary school is organised  as an excursion to look at the playground, classrooms, toilets, and see children in uniform – to have an idea of what a school looks like.
• Self Help Skills Lunch box week where children learn to eat out of lunch boxes. This teaches children what to eat and when to eat it. They learn how to open, unwrap and peel their snacks.
• Physical Skills School readiness activities are ordinarily delivered as table top activities to develop children’s endurance to sit upright for an entire school day
• Fine & Gross Motor Skills Name writing and cutting skills are always incorporated into to the daily program with a special focus on them during school readiness activities
• Cognitive Skills Mathematical concepts, pattern recognition, colours and shapes are further investigated during school readiness activities etc.
• Self-regulation and concentration skills A key part of our program, which reflects primary school expectations, is the focus on your child’s ability to concentrate, this includes independently completing a task from beginning to end.

Any child who may experience some school readiness delays is offered extreme amounts of support. We liaise closely with Early Intervention from the department of Education to seek the most suitable placement for your child. External professionals including: speech therapists, occupational therapists, bicultural support workers, and music therapists are welcome to use the centre for sessions with your child as they work alongside them in coaching further development.

We try our best to group children who are going to the same primary schools together to establish and maintain friendships, as well as building confidence when transitioning to primary school. This continuity is of course celebrated at our graduation evening which symbolises one of the most dramatic milestones for your child.