After School Activity Groups

Help your child build friendships and gain the support they need in a fun, safe and engaging group environment.

Handwriting and Literacy

Mindfulness and Anxiety

Sensory Integration

Life Skill Building

Social and
Communication Skills

Esteem Team

Could you pick someone with low self-esteem out of a line-up? Did you know that headaches, insomnia, mood swings and fatigue can be signs of low self-esteem? Self-esteem does not need to be a taboo word, or something people see as an insult. We all have our challenges, and for some self-perception is difficult. It is so empowering for children, teens and adults to feel supported at any time in their lives. It is also empowering to know others are experiencing what you are.

The Esteem Team creates a safe, structured yet creative environment for kids and teens to learn about themselves, meet new people, grow and develop in good company. In this fun and supportive environment, our kids will learn about self-esteem, what it means to them, strategies to support themselves and language to use with others.

RUN BY A REGISTERED AND EXPERIENCED COUNSELLOR. FOR CHILDREN AGED 8 -15 YEARS.

Handwriting Heroes

Handwriting Heroes is a group designed to improve all areas of handwriting skills in fun, interactive, playful and enjoyable activities in a face-to-face or online group environment.

Look beneath the skills of writing into all the mechanical and developmental milestones that are necessary for clear, smooth, neat and enjoyable handwriting experiences.

If your child is avoiding writing tasks, complaining of a sore hand, rushing their work, writing all over the lines or writing their letters in different directions, they may qualify to become a Handwriting Hero! The aim of the group is to improve their handwriting without feeling like they are ‘doing work’.

FOR CHILDREN AGED 5-7 YEARS AND 8-12 YEARS.

Messy Monsters

Ever wondered what a unique way of encouraging your child’s development looks like? Messy Monsters provides education on the importance of sensory exposure and messy play. Messy play encourages curiosity, imagination, communication, and concentration. It develops independence and enables physical and language development.

Specifically tailored for children ages 2 and up, it supports cognitive growth, fine/gross motor skills, social interaction and much more! Our groups are organised between ‘sensory seekers’ and ‘sensory avoiders’ to create a comfortable environment to grow and learn.

FOR PRESCHOOL AGED CHILDREN-15 YEARS.

Interactive Reading

Have you every struggled to make book reading a fun and exciting learning experience? Struggled with comprehension and understanding what you have read? How do books with less words and more pictures improve your child’s ability to learn?

Using principles from the Hanen program and the DIR-Floortime Framework to facilitate your child to engage, think, predict and learn. Tailored discussions about character qualities, emotional understanding and behavioural predictions. Facilitating thought, reasoning and problem solving in your child and expanding these ideas in a group setting.

FOR CHILDREN AGED 5-7 YEARS AND 8-12 YEARS.

Engine Group

Does your child struggle to regulate themselves in certain situations? Do you want them to learn strategies to regulate their energy and attention levels? Engine Group aims to support self-regulation by helping your child understand their ability to be able to monitor, maintain or change their alertness so that the response is appropriate to their situation or task.

The group offers multiple strategies and activities to support appropriate regulation. These strategies and activities all aim to provide support for matching the required arousal level to the activity they are engaged in or plan to engage in.

FOR CHILDREN AGED 5-15 YEARS.

Fine Motor Club

Fine Motor Club’s mission is to debunk that fine motor is hard and boring. We are keen to change the minds of kids and their parents, and provide fun games to improve these skills without feeling like it’s work. Looking at developmental skills that lead to successful fine motor skills is the key to this program’s success. This program has successfully run with great results, and it is going online! Helping more kids and more families in our larger community.

Fine Motor club will use fundamental developmental milestones, reflex patterns, and gross motor skills to refine and develop dexterity, hand strength and muscular endurance essential for tricky skills like buttons, shoe laces, zippers, cutlery use.

FOR CHILDREN AGED 5-7 YEARS AND 8-10 YEARS.

The Commanders

The Commanders is not about speech clarity, speech sounds or literacy skills. It is all about how we communicate. The impact our language has on our choices and on others impacts our relationships and the likelihood someone will meet our request. It is about the functional and emotive use of language skills.

We look at different forms of communication and how we can use these to communicate effectively. Learn about non-verbal cues, explore miscommunications, reading between the lines in conversations, and deducing meaning from other’s cues. We will recognise different behavioural types of communication, and what this means for us as individuals. Both verbal and written communication will be developed and utilised in the program.

FOR CHILDREN AGED 6-15 YEARS.

We Thinkers

Does your child struggle with social situations? Are they often left trying to figure out what someone else is thinking or feeling? The We Thinkers group might be just the thing they need.

In this program we look at social thinking skills through reading stories and practicing using these skills in a group setting. As well as building skills to identify their own thoughts and feelings, the children will turn into social detectives to identify what others may be thinking and feeling, and how best to use this information. We use a range of play-based methods in order to teach important skills involved with social thinking.

Mindful Magic

Ever wondered what worry, anxiety and stress looks like and the right way to cope? Children are provided with different strategies to help overcome these confronting feelings.

We work our magic to notice the worry and implement the strategy that will best help in the situation. We look at different interventions such as deep breathing, visualisation, externalisation and more. We provide innovative methods of mindfulness to help reduce stress, worry and anxiety, teaching children how to work their own magic using their mind.

FOR CHILDREN AGED 7-12 YEARS.

The Adventure Program

Run in the community, this program includes planned activities such as water parks, river walks, rock climbing, flip out, escape rooms, bowling, laser tag and more. The program aims to foster social skills, confidence, self-esteem, life skills and self-regulation in a community setting.

The Adventure Weekly Program runs weekly during the school term and is designed for teens; (participants receive a budget and organise the activities of their choice including planning and booking).

The Adventure Holiday Program is a week-long program, where the planning is done for them.
The kids just show up, learn, socialise, challenge their boundaries and have fun! There are 3 programs:

THE EARLY EXPLORERS: FOR CHILDREN AGED 3-6 YEARS
THE WILDERNESS WARRIORS: FOR CHILDREN AGED 7-9 YEARS
THE TEENAGE TRAILBLAZERS: FOR CHILDREN AGED 10 YEAR+

FINANCIAL
ASSISTANCE
AVAILABLE

SPRING FORWARD FAMILY CENTRE

31 Henry Street Penrith, NSW 2750
Phone: (02) 4722 0891 Email: springfwd