School readiness

Getting ready for school, one playful day at a time.

Mini Brains Play is not a school, and it does not try to be. But we know what children are expected to do when they walk into their first classroom, because we have mapped our play against the Australian Curriculum. Every activity is designed to grow the human strengths and early foundations that give your child a confident start.

The readiness years come first

We build the ground school then builds on

In Australia, the curriculum formally begins at Foundation, the first year of school, called Prep, Kindergarten, Reception or Pre-Primary depending on your state. Mini Brains Play is made for the readiness years just before: the language, the number sense, the curiosity, the focus and the confidence a child brings with them on day one.

Ages 2 to 7
Mini Brains Play: playful readiness at home
→
Foundation
First year of school: the curriculum begins
→
Year 1 and on
Learning builds on strong foundations
Mapped to the curriculum

What Foundation expects, and how our play helps.

The left of each card is drawn from ACARA's own plain-language guide for parents. The right is how Mini Brains play builds toward it.

English

Literacy foundations
What Foundation expects
  • Enjoy picture books and rhymes, and communicate in familiar situations
  • Retell stories and personal experiences
  • Recognise rhyming words, syllables and sounds
  • Name letters and the most common sounds they make
  • Create texts, out loud and in writing
How Mini Brains helps

Every activity is talked through together, so children practise describing, explaining and retelling out loud, the roots of oral language. Rhyme, syllable and sound play grows phonological awareness, the strongest early predictor of reading. Story-led themes invite children to narrate and imagine.

StorySoundsBirds
Grows: Connection, Curiosity

Mathematics

Numeracy foundations
What Foundation expects
  • A sense of shape, size, number, order, pattern and position
  • Count and connect numbers and quantities to 20
  • Recognise repeating patterns
  • Compare, group, sort and name familiar shapes
  • Use location words like above, below and next to
How Mini Brains helps

Children count, match, compare and sort through hands-on play, so number stays real, not abstract. They spot and extend patterns, name shapes as they build, and use position words as they pack, tidy and arrange. Maths lives in the kitchen and the toy box, exactly where it should start.

NumbersShapesPatternsBoxes
Grows: Attention, Sticking at it

Science

Curiosity and observation
What Foundation expects
  • Build wonder and curiosity about everyday things
  • Observe the features of plants and animals
  • Investigate the properties of everyday materials
  • Explore how things move
How Mini Brains helps

So many of our themes are looking closely and having a go: watching a bird, testing what floats, noticing a shadow move. Children predict, try, and notice what happened, the exact habits of a young scientist, long before they meet the word.

MinibeastsWaterSeedsMagnetsShadowsWeather
Grows: Curiosity, Real world

Humanities and Social Sciences

People and place
What Foundation expects
  • Explore their personal world and family history
  • Investigate places they live in and belong to
  • Find out about other places through stories
  • Explore why places are special and how to care for them
  • Recognise the importance of Country and Place to First Nations Australians
How Mini Brains helps

Play and conversation about family, home and the places we go build early history and geography through noticing and talking. Real-world settings invite children to wonder about other places and to care for their own, the first steps of a curious, connected citizen.

BeachShopKitchenLiving
Grows: Connection, Real world

Health and Physical Education

Body, feelings and relationships
What Foundation expects
  • Practise movement skills and learn about the body
  • Name and describe emotions: happy, sad, excited, tired, angry, scared, confused
  • Ask permission when sharing space or possessions
  • Show actions that ensure fair play
How Mini Brains helps

Our Feelings theme names and explores emotions, the exact readiness skill, while Body and Move build coordination and body awareness. Because play is shared and turn-taking, children practise asking, sharing and fair play. The rescue us button gently models calming a big feeling.

FeelingsBodyMoveBalance
Grows: Connection, Agency

The Arts

Creative play
What Foundation expects
  • Use purposeful, creative play to make and share arts works
  • Explore sounds by listening, singing and making music
  • Respond to and create artworks by drawing and painting
  • Use imagination in dance and drama
How Mini Brains helps

Open-ended making, drawing and building run through our themes, and Colours and Mixing turn art into discovery. Sound and song play explore music, and imaginative, dramatic play is woven in. Children create something and share it, the heart of the Arts.

ColoursMixingSounds
Grows: Creativity, Agency

Technologies

Design and everyday tech
What Foundation expects
  • Discover how technologies work through exploration, design and guided play
  • Follow steps to safely make a designed solution
  • Become familiar with how people use digital systems
  • Represent data as objects, pictures and symbols
How Mini Brains helps

Making activities follow simple steps to build something, the seed of design. Sorting and representing objects, pictures and symbols lays early groundwork for data and thinking. And the whole app is built on the curriculum's own design-thinking process, which you can read about below.

BoxesShapesPatterns
Grows: Real world, Sticking at it

Languages

Listening and culture
What Foundation expects
  • Learn a language other than English through play and imagination
  • Imitate sounds, gestures and expressions
  • Listen to songs, picture books and stories
  • Appreciate that language and culture are related
How Mini Brains helps

We are not a languages app, and we will not pretend to be. But the listening, sound play and cultural curiosity our activities build are the ground that language learning rests on: an ear tuned to sounds, and an openness to how other people see the world.

SoundsStory
Grows: Curiosity, Connection
Beyond the subjects

Our eight strengths are the curriculum's capabilities.

The Australian Curriculum names general capabilities: the dispositions every child needs to learn, live and work. The human strengths Mini Brains Play grows are those same capabilities, starting early.

Curiosity and Creativity→Critical and Creative Thinking
Connection and Agency→Personal and Social capability
Attention and Sticking at it→The self-regulation that underpins Literacy and Numeracy
Real world→Ethical and Intercultural Understanding: fairness, care and curiosity about others
Discernment→Early Digital Literacy and critical thinking about the world
How it is built

Built on the curriculum's own design thinking

Design thinking is a core concept of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies. It is how young designers learn to solve real problems: Understand, Ideate, Model, Reflect. Mini Brains Play is built on that same loop, and our play invites children into it, noticing a problem, trying an idea, having a go, and thinking about what happened. So the way your child plays mirrors the way the curriculum teaches thinking.

UnderstandIdeateModelReflect

The honest fine print

Mini Brains Play supports school readiness. It does not replace school or formally teach the curriculum, which begins at Foundation. We build the foundations and dispositions a child brings with them.

The expectations on the left of each card are drawn from the Australian Curriculum V9 (Foundation) and ACARA's parent and carer information. Mini Brains Play is independent and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, ACARA.

Give your little one a confident start.

Mini Brains Play is live on the App Store. Download it and grab today's ten minutes.

Download on the App Store