Hello lovely readers!
Welcome back! We hope you all enjoyed the break and managed to get in some quality family time.
It is coming up to that time of year when you have not long applied for your little ones to attend primary school. We know how daunting this can be. We often get asked how you as parents can help your child be ‘ready’ for school.
Quite often expectations of a child starting school can be based very much on academics such as reading and writing. However, we at Squirrel Lodge encourage parents to focus on is independence alongside KCC and their advice. Below I will outline a few ways you as parents and us as practitioners can help prepare your child for a smooth transition into primary school.
- New lunch box – let them practice at home with their new lunch box before starting school, encouraging to open the Tupperware pots and food packaging at home.
- School shoes – think about the new school shoes that are purchased and ask yourself ‘are they practical?’ ‘can they put them on independently?’, In this case laces are often impractical as children often cannot do them independently until an older age. You can also encourage them to wear them in at home before they start school.
- Discuss school uniform and practice getting dressed at home (for PE this helps a lot), thinking about buttons and zippers can help too.
- Washing hand routine – children get minimal help in hygiene routines at school so guiding your child in good hygiene routines such as washing hands with soap is a good way to help support the transition to school.
- Communicating needs – help your child communicate their needs by labelling them during day to day activities can help. For example ‘ I am hungry, I need some lunch’ ‘ I need a wee/poo/the toilet’ Some children do find it hard to work out what need needs to be met once the feeling has become stressed ( for example being hangry!)
- Doing zips on coats- the very simple task of encouraging your child to try their zip independently can really help support their independence within school and therefore the transition.
- Turn taking and sharing at home (with family or friends)- to encourage the development of understanding of turn taking and sharing you can encourage this to be done day to day at home, verbalising when it happens “ mummy’s turn, now your turn”
Please note that not all children will be able to do all these things but helping them learn to
become slightly more independent in these ways can help children’s transition into school that little bit smoother.
Other ways we can support them are
- Encouraging being active daily- encouraging children to work their gross motor skills through play ( eg running, jumping, climbing) can help develop their coordination, balance, fine motor skills as well as many other skills that can in turn support a transition to school;.
- Helping develop a love of stories by reading and looking at books or stories together
- Offering a variety of healthy food options available to encourage healthy food choices
As the time approaches closer and closer you may find that your child’s behaviour will change, they may show more ‘challenging’ behaviour, they may become withdrawn slightly or they may be very excited and talk about it non- stop. This is very common and normally settles down once started school or once they have accepted the idea of change into their daily routine. If you are concerned about your child in the run up to them starting school, then please speak to their key person or a member of the management team.
I hope you have found this helpful!
Please let us know if you would like us to do a blog post about any particular subjects!
Lots of love
Terrie and the Squirrels
xx
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