Prep For School- Hills District

As a parent, these are often the messages I look forward to most. 🤍

A little glimpse of Addie proudly showing what she has made, concentrating on an activity or joining in with her friends helps me feel connected to a part of her day that I wasn’t there to see.

It also gives us somewhere to begin when we talk about her morning.

Instead of asking the very big question, “What did you do today?”, I can show her a photo and ask:

“What were you doing here?”

“How did that activity work?”

“What happened next?”

The photos also connect with the newsletter we send each week. They show families what we did, while the newsletter explains why we did it.

I feel so strongly about this: if we can’t explain how an activity supports a child’s learning or development, it shouldn’t be part of our program.

And over time, the photos help parents see the progress that can be easy to miss from one week to the next.

A more confident pencil grip.
Joining the group.
Having a go independently.
Proudly sharing something they have achieved.

One photo captures a moment - but weeks and months of photos help you see a journey. 🌱

That’s why we send them.

*We also recognise that photographing and sharing images of children carries an enormous responsibility-particularly in the current climate. We never take the trust families place in us lightly. Prep For School has clear safeguards around consent, photography, storage and sharing, and images are only shared publicly with parent or guardian permission. Child safety will always remain paramount in everything we do.*

What you’re seeing here is the beginning of an amazing journey - happening in real time. 🤍

But this moment has been months in the making.

The foundations have been carefully built through pre-reading skills, introducing sounds, revisiting them, and giving children time to listen, notice, remember and make connections.

When those foundations are strong, this next step doesn’t feel scary. It isn’t a leap - it’s a natural progression.

And the goal isn’t for every child to be reading before school. It’s not a requirement, and it’s certainly not a race.

We begin this stage when each child is ready.

While one group may be blending sounds, another might be revisiting sounds we’ve already covered.

Because every child’s journey is different.
What matters is knowing that each child has been given the time, repetition and strong foundations they need before taking that next step. 🌱📖

Learning to read doesn’t start with reading. 🤍

Before children can confidently put sounds together and read words, there are so many little foundations that need to come first - hearing sounds, recognising rhyme, breaking words apart, listening carefully and beginning to understand how sounds work within words.

That’s why I love the way we approach early literacy at Prep For School.

We use evidence-based programs like PreLit to carefully build those foundations, alongside Milo the Monkey to bring the learning to life through stories, songs, play and hands-on experiences.

Our goal is never to have every child reading before they start school.

It’s to give them the strongest possible foundations so that when they do walk into Kindergarten, learning to read feels familiar, achievable and exciting. 🥰

When I originally thought about Adelaide starting Prep For School next year, her speech was something that had been flagged.

Enter Miss Michelle 🤍

Michelle has joined the Prep For School team on Thursday mornings and has brought SO much knowledge and experience to Prep For School.

Not only does she support what we’re doing in the classroom, but the amount our whole team (myself included!) has learnt from having her speech pathology perspective has been incredible.

For children already seeing a Speech Pathologist, Michelle isn’t there to replace that support at all. Instead, we’re more than happy to look at reports or recommendations and make sure we’re supporting those same goals while your little one is with us at Prep.

And I can recommend Michelle from both sides - as the owner of Prep For School, but also as a mum. All three of my own children see her, including little Adelaide here. 🥹

She really is such a natural fit for Prep For School and I feel incredibly lucky to have her expertise as another layer of what we can offer our little people. 🤍