Starting primary school is an enormous milestone, for parents and children. It’s both exciting and daunting as many parents worry if their children are truly ready to embark on this part of their education. School readiness needs to be developed early on and with right preparation, you and your child will feel confident enough to take this next step together.
Here are some things you need to consider to prepare your child for school.
Incorporating Structure into Your Child’s Day
Children who are accustomed to a loose daily routine may find it difficult to fit into a structured routine like that of a school. Giving children structure helps keep them organised, focussed and confident enough to know what’s coming up next.
At ToBeMe the preparatory classroom is mirrored with a school bell, uniforms and other activities aligned with preparing children for primary school.
Social Readiness
Some children are more socially ready to start school than others. It’s important to remember that social readiness doesn’t come naturally to all children and is dependent on putting your child in situations where they can foster good social skills.
There are many social skills needed for school, including:
- Sharing
- Being able to ask to join in
- Playing cooperatively
- Taking turns
- Asking questions
- Being polite
Emotional Readiness
School allows children to build upon their emotional intelligence as they learn to cope and deal with a range of emotions throughout the day. In just one school day, your child may feel successful, frustrated, happy, lonely, worried, excited and so many more.
It’s a lot of emotions to fit into one day, and the more emotionally ready your child is, the better they will be able to handle their emotions at school and use these emotions to drive their success and development.
Emotional readiness may include:
- Being able to persevere with a task, even if they are feeling frustrated
- Behaving appropriately when feeling angry or upset
- Being able to detach confidently from their primary caregiver
- Being able to self-regulate and recognise when they are feeling a certain way.
Academic Readiness
When children come to school, they enter with a vast range of academic abilities. Some children may already be reading, others may be working on identifying letters of the alphabet.
The important thing is to have high expectations for your child and the belief that your child has the capacity to learn and achieve. Some children will need more support and time over others, but all children have the ability to learn.
Some skills that will prepare your child for school include:
- Having appropriate motor skills and pencil grip
- Being able to correctly name and identify the letters of the alphabet
- Having good phonemic awareness – the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual speech sounds in spoken words
- Understanding that letters don’t HAVE sounds but are used to REPRESENT speech sounds in words as one, two, three or four letter spelling patterns.
- Being able to read, write and make numbers from 0-10
- Having excellent oral language skills that will assist them in understanding instructions, communicating with the teacher and their peers and understanding the books they read.
How Can We Help at ToBeMe?
The youngest children in the classroom are more likely to be on medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) than their older classmates.
At ToBeMe social and emotional readiness of a child before moving to the next room is an important factor in a child transitioning. We recognise your child’s individuality and unique set of interests and abilities; we work with children individually in tandem with our curriculum to be the best version of themselves. We know school preparation and will prepare your child in every way for that next part of their journey.
The real secret behind our ToBeMe Early Learning CurriculumTM is that it is tailored to suit each and every child. Through the four key connections of learning and teaching, your child is given the best opportunity to learn and grow.
Contact us for more information today.
Comments are closed.
