Preschool Boost
Speech pathologists at Sound Bites Therapy Services partner with preschool educators and families to help children build strong communication, feeding, and early learning skills. Using practical, evidence-based strategies, we embed support into everyday routines, play, and learning experiences to create meaningful and lasting outcomes.
AHP Support – Speech Pathology
Find out how our speech pathologists can support your children, educators and families through an AHP role.
Every preschool community is unique. Our supports are flexible, individualised, and adapted to meet the needs, priorities, and routines of each centre, ensuring strategies fit naturally within your existing environment.
Who We Support
Our supports are designed for children who may:
- Be slower to develop speech or language skills
- Be difficult for others to understand
- Find it challenging to follow instructions or participate in group learning
- Need support with play, social skills, or communication
- Experience feeding or mealtime difficulties
- Benefit from Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
How We Can Help
Our speech pathologists provide support in:
- Language development – understanding and using language
- Speech development – speech sounds and intelligibility
- Social communication – play skills, interaction, and group participation
- Early literacy foundations – building skills for future reading and learning
- Feeding support – mealtime participation, safety, and sensory or oral motor considerations
- Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) – assessment, set-up, modelling, and team training
Flexible, Individualised Support
We work collaboratively with each preschool to design a service that meets the needs of your children, educators, and families. Supports may include:
- On-site or telehealth services
- Individual or small group intervention
- Educator coaching and capacity building
- Family information sessions and workshops
- Collaborative goal setting and tailored support plans
- Ongoing consultation, progress monitoring, and regular reviews
Outcomes
We aim to support positive outcomes for children, educators, and families by:
- Building children’s communication, language, speech, and mealtime skills, supporting school readiness and wellbeing.
- Strengthening social skills, emotional regulation, and confidence in group settings
- Increasing educator knowledge and confidence in supporting diverse communication and mealtime needs using evidence-based strategies
- Empowering families with practical strategies support development at home, ensuring consistent, collaborative support across environments.
Preschool Programs
Explore our evidence-based programs designed to build children’s communication, language and literacy skills.
Let’s Tell Stories! is an oral narrative program designed by Sound Bites Therapy Services for preschool-aged children. Adapted from the evidence-based Oral Narrative Intervention Programme (ONIP), this program helps young children build the vital skills needed to understand and express ideas through stories-laying the groundwork for strong language, cognitive skills and communication.
Through engaging group sessions led by our speech pathologists, children learn to:
- Retell familiar stories using sequencing and visual supports.
- Understand and answer “who, what, where, when, why, and how” questions.
- Expand vocabulary, strengthen sentence structure, and use key narrative language.
- Participate in shared storytelling and express themselves confidently during play and group activities.
Let’s Tell Stories! empowers educators and families with practical strategies and ongoing support, helping to embed rich oral language experiences into daily routines. With targeted coaching, resources, and modelling, adults become confident partners in each child’s language journey-scaffolding responses and extending children’s thinking during every story time or conversation.
Program highlights:
- Small group format tailored for young children, fostering confidence and participation.
- Practical resources and easy-to-implement strategies for learning environments and at home.
- Ongoing support for educators and families to create language-rich, narrative-friendly settings.
- Let’s Tell Stories! embraces culturally responsive practice by recognising oral storytelling as a valued way of sharing knowledge and experiences across many cultures, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This approach builds on children’s existing strengths, experiences, and knowledge, supporting the development of communication skills that enable meaningful participation in learning, play, relationships and everyday interactions.
Expected outcomes:
- Children develop stronger communication, storytelling, and group participation skills.
- Educators and families feel equipped to foster early language and narrative development every day.
Let’s Tell Stories! can be delivered within preschool settings or via flexible delivery options to suit service needs.
Contact Sound Bites Therapy Services using the form below to learn more or to book this program for your centre.
The Sing and Sign Storytime Program developed by Sound Bites Therapy Services is an interactive communication program designed for preschoolers, supporting inclusive communication through Key Word Sign and core board symbols in shared reading and singing activities. This engaging program supports children to communicate through speech, signing, gestures, or by pointing to symbols-offering every child a way to connect and participate during learning and play.
Led by Sound Bites speech pathologists, Sing and Sign Storytime introduces practical strategies that make shared reading, singing, and everyday routines more inclusive for all children, including those with diverse communication needs. Educators and families are supported to confidently use Key Word Sign and core boards, making communication accessible and fun throughout the day.
Program highlights:
- Shared story experiences: Children join in with repeated story readings, learn new vocabulary, and express themselves using speech, signing, and core boards.
- Singing: group singing activities throughout daily routines to provide engaging opportunities to practice and consolidate use of Key Word Signs and core board symbols.
- Resource-rich support: Practical tools-including core boards, Key Word Sign resources, and helpful handouts-are provided to ensure strategies can be used across classroom and home environments.
- Coaching for educators and families: Guidance and support help embed inclusive communication strategies in daily routines.
- Sing and Sign Storytime embraces inclusive practice by recognising and valuing the many different ways children communicate, learn, and participate. By providing multiple ways for children to understand and express themselves through speech, Key Word Sign, gestures, and symbols, the program supports meaningful participation, belonging, and engagement for children with diverse strengths, abilities, communication styles, and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
Expected outcomes:
- Children demonstrate improved verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and greater engagement in learning activities.
- Educators and families deepen their understanding of diverse ways children communicate, and gain confidence using supportive strategies across everyday settings.
Sing and Sign Storytime can be delivered within preschool settings or via flexible delivery options to suit service needs.
Contact Sound Bites Therapy Services using the form below to learn more or to book this program for your centre.
If you are interested in hearing more about how our experienced clinicians can help your centre, please fill in the following form.
Presentations and Programs
At Sound Bites Therapy Services, our clinicians continually invest in advanced training to deepen their knowledge across a wide range of practice areas. Each team member pursues ongoing professional development tailored to the unique needs of our clients, whether it’s communication, feeding, literacy, or supporting those with complex conditions.
Our team regularly shares their knowledge with the wider community. Many clinicians present to teachers and educational staff, offering practical strategies and insights to help support students with diverse needs. By focusing their training on particular areas, our clinicians ensure families and educators benefit from up-to-date, evidence-based approaches that make a real difference in everyday settings.
Additionally, our clinicians deliver engaging learning programs for groups of all sizes, from small groups to entire classrooms. They work collaboratively with school staff to identify and address common challenges faced by students, ensuring practical solutions are implemented where they’re needed most. By working closely with teachers, our clinicians tailor programs to complement classroom goals and ensure alignment with the curriculum, supporting both student progress and educational outcomes.
It Takes Two to Talk is a parent-implemented, early language intervention program in which parents learn how to become their child’s primary language facilitator. This program is an evidence-based and cost-effective alternative to clinician-implemented therapy for young children with language delays. This program can be conducted in a variety of contexts including group, 1:1 sessions as well as in person and on-line.
Supporting emergent literacy skills is a critical component of setting young children on the path to success. This program is a comprehensive and flexible approach to ensuring the best possible emergent literacy support in early childhood settings.
ABC and Beyond is an evidence-based framework for engaging and coaching educators to create literacy-rich experiences that have far-reaching benefits for all children in the classroom. You will learn to help them integrate responsive interaction strategies into their everyday conversations and book reading to promote the six emergent literacy skills that lay the foundation for school success:
The More Than Words® workshop is a Hanen parent coaching program designed for parents of young children with suspected or diagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Using a naturalistic, family-centred, strengths-based approach, the program supports parents to maximise their child’s opportunities to develop social communication skills in everyday situations. Parents learn what motivates their child to communicate, how to use their child’s strengths to set goals, how to make interactions last longer and understand their child’s unique interests, along with practical strategies to support meaningful, engaging interactions. The program can be delivered flexibly through group or 1:1 sessions, in-person or online, to meet organisational and family needs.
This session provides educators with an overview of dysphagia and its impact on safety, nutrition, and participation during mealtimes. Teachers will learn to recognise signs that may indicate swallowing difficulties, understand recommended mealtime supports, and implement safe, consistent strategies within education and care settings. The session emphasises collaboration with families and health professionals to support safe and positive mealtime experiences for children.
Sound Bites clinicians have a long history of supporting Speech Pathology students at Flinders University, delivering lectures, workshops, and clinical placements in paediatric feeding.
This presentation explores fussy feeding in childhood and provides practical, evidence-based strategies to support children at home and in care or school settings. Participants will gain a better understanding of why fussy eating occurs, how to reduce stress and pressure around mealtimes, and ways to build positive, supportive food experiences. The focus is on realistic strategies that promote confidence, participation, and healthy relationships with food.
This session supports teachers to understand selective mutism and its impact on a student’s communication, participation, and learning at school. It provides practical, classroom-based strategies to reduce anxiety, support communication in low-pressure ways, and create environments where students feel safe to engage. The focus is on collaboration, gradual progress, and evidence-based approaches that support student wellbeing and inclusion.
This presentation supports teachers to use shared book reading as a powerful tool to engage young children and strengthen oral language development. It focuses on practical, evidence-based strategies for reading books interactively, encouraging participation, and intentionally supporting vocabulary, comprehension, and expressive language. Teachers will leave with clear, classroom-ready ideas to make book reading more engaging and to “power up” language learning across everyday literacy experiences.
Shape Coding is an evidence-based approach that supports teachers to explicitly teach sentence structure and grammar. By using visual shapes, colours, and symbols, Shape Coding helps students understand how sentences are formed, organise ideas, and use grammar more accurately in spoken and written language. The approach is particularly effective for students who benefit from structured, visual language support.
Shape Coding can be used as a whole-classroom approach to support language and literacy development. Through explicit, visually supported instruction, students learn how words and sentences work together to create clear meaning. Shape Coding supports curriculum learning by strengthening sentence construction, comprehension, and written expression across a range of classroom tasks. Shape coding can be used across a range of classroom tasks and can be a valuable tool to break down word types and sentences. It can also be easily applied to reading comprehension exercises and extended writing tasks to support students to access these activities with more direction and clarity.
Our clinicians can support whole-class Shape coding programs in schools.
This information session provides an overview of cleft lip and palate and its impact on speech, feeding, hearing, and learning. Participants will gain an understanding of how cleft conditions affect communication development and how to support children effectively across home, early childhood, and school settings. The session highlights practical strategies, collaboration with specialist teams, and ways to promote positive participation and inclusion.
This session focuses on building the speech and literacy skills that underpin successful reading and writing. Teachers will learn practical, classroom-ready activities to support the development of phonological awareness and articulation skills, including listening skills, sound awareness, and accurate speech sound production. The session highlights how strong oral language, clear speech, and phonological foundations support early literacy success and confidence in the classroom.
This presentation supports teachers to understand the difference between developmental stuttering and disordered stuttering in young children. It provides guidance on what is typical, what may indicate concern, and when referral is recommended. Teachers will learn practical, supportive ways to respond to a child who is stuttering in the centre, including strategies that reduce pressure, support communication confidence, and promote positive participation in everyday classroom interactions.
This session supports teachers to adjust their language so all children can access learning. It focuses on practical strategies to simplify and clarify spoken language, support understanding, and reduce linguistic load for children who are bilingual or who have language difficulties. Teachers will learn how small changes to instruction, questioning, and classroom talk can increase comprehension, participation, and confidence for all learners.