The Playmakers · our before-school program
Play is taught, not caught.
The Playmakers is our before-school program.
What we know about this stage
Before school, play is the whole language.
Everything social a child does at this age, they do through play. And play runs on skills nobody thinks to teach, because most children pick them up by being around other children: paying attention to the same thing at the same time, taking turns, letting somebody else decide what happens next, and getting the game going again after it falls over.
Some children don't pick those up by being around other children. It isn't that your child isn't interested, and it isn't that you haven't tried. The way in is missing.
What parents tell us
Told there is a problem, and handed nothing to do about it.
Parents tell us somebody has said something, whether it was kinder, a nurse, or what they noticed themselves at a birthday party. Their child plays near other children rather than with them, and it comes apart the moment it has to be a shared game.
They tell us they have become the bridge between their child and every other child, at every playground and every gathering.
What is hardest to find out
What to actually do. Nearly all the advice available describes the problem, and almost none of it tells you what to do at four o'clock on a Tuesday in the sandpit.
The Playmakers
One program, for the years before school.
What it provides
Shared, sustained play with other children
The membership is ongoing. Tools inside it are term-limited, and the end of a tool is a review rather than an exit.
The same people recur across tools, terms and school holidays. Because membership is continuous, a participant who takes up a holiday activity or a new campaign is joining people they already know. There is no new decision, no new group, no new set of faces to negotiate.
LiftOff carries band transitions. The same practitioner holds the relationship across a stage change and briefs the receiving group.
Available at this stage
- PEERS® for Preschoolers
- Holiday activities with the same kids
- LiftOff, our life transition planning tool, which is how we handle the big transitions
- Functional assessment
Which of these, and when, is something we work out with you.
What we believe
We believe play is taught, not caught.
Most providers believe a preschooler who struggles socially needs more social exposure. The thinking is that children learn to play by playing, so the more time a child spends around other children, the more chances they have to pick it up. So the usual advice is more playgroup, more kinder days and more organised activities, often with a support worker alongside to help the child get through them. It's an understandable approach, because it is how most children do learn to play, and because time in a group is easy to arrange, easy to fund and easy to count.
In reality, they’re already getting the exposure and it isn’t working. Play before school is not a setting, it is a skill set, and a child who hasn’t picked those skills up isn’t going to acquire them by being put in more play. They’re accumulating failed attempts instead of practice, and every one of them teaches a young child that play goes badly. More of the same isn’t the answer, because the piece that’s missing is one a playground can’t hand over.
That's why we built The Playmakers as one program a family stays in until school starts. Inside it, PEERS® for Preschoolers teaches you, the parent, the skills, and you do the coaching, which means it happens in the sandpit on a Tuesday afternoon, where play actually is, rather than for an hour a week in a room. Your child is assessed before and after, so we measure what changed in them rather than counting how many sessions you attended. Holiday activities and functional assessment sit alongside it. And because it is a program rather than a course, we are still there when the next change arrives. The move into Prep is the first time your child will be expected to manage a new building, new adults and a new set of rules without you in the room, and LiftOff plans for it with you before it happens.
Common questions
What people usually ask.
Anything else, ask us on the call.
Do you work alongside NDIS early childhood partners?
Yes. At nine, a child moves from an early childhood partner to a local area coordinator, and for many families that is the first time continuity breaks. The coordinator changes. We don't. A child who starts with us before school stays with the same people through primary school.
Is it online?
Yes. PEERS® for Preschoolers runs online, so it works wherever you live, and in-person support is available around Ballarat.
Take the first step
Let's talk about your child.
Request a call back and one of our team will ring you at a time that suits. It takes about fifteen minutes, it's free, and you don't need anything worked out before we speak.