What does being ‘Ready’ to start school really mean?
How can we help to prepare children and reassure families?
Our Supporting School Readiness HOT TOPIC is packed with ideas and links to resources that will help relieve anxieties and equip children with the skills they need to be school ready.
Social Skills
Build on communication skills and self esteem through activities that encourage children to share information about themselves, their likes and dislikes. Involve children in games and projects that will require them to work with others, developing listening and negotiation skills and encouraging sharing and taking turns. Sitting together at meal and snack times will also promote socialising and interaction.
Emotional Skills
Talk about Feelings and Emotions and chat regularly with children about starting school. Encourage them to express their feelings and ideas. What are they looking forward to the most? Is there anything that is worrying them? Talk about what is exciting about school and offer reassurance for any anxieties. Offer activities that help children to learn about feelings, emotions, why we experience them and how we can share and manage them.
Physical Skills
As well as encouraging active, healthy lifelstyles and promoting opportuntunities to explore outdoors and for risky play, we can also promote independence and self-care skills. Allow children time and encourage them to try things for themselves, such as putting on and taking off their shoes and coat. Can they use cutlery, open lunch boxes, packets or cartons? Provide lots of opportunities for them to try! Get children involved with small chores. Provide encouragement and acknowledge their efforts with stickers or reward charts.
Cognitive Skills
Cognitive development refers to how children think, learn, explore, remember, and solve problems. Children build on and develop these skills everyday through play, interactions and daily routines. Through following children’s interests and observing patterns in their play we can develop a greater understanding of children’s motivation for doing something, how they learn, and which type of activities hold their attention.
We can use this knowledge to further support children’s learning in preparation for starting school…
⭐Support Reading, Writing and Listening Skills
Regularly reading stories with children will help them with their listening and attention skills whilst also encouraging an interest in books. Go on a letter hunt to see if you can find all of the letters from the alphabet and have fun experimenting with various materials and small tools to develop fine motor and mark making skills.
⭐Build on Number Recognition and Counting
Sing number songs and rhymes, look at number books, play games that involve numbers and counting. Being able to recognise numbers up to 10 and count up to 20 is a great start for children who are about to start school.
⭐Look at Colours, Shapes, Sizes and Quantities
Talk about colours in daily conversations, play colour eye spy or ask children to collect or match different coloured objects. Go on a shape hunt to see how many circles, squares, rectangles or triangles you can find and explore patterns, similarities and differences, comparing sizes and quantities, positional language and concepts such as bigger, smaller, taller, shorter, longer, more than, less than, etc.
⭐Discuss Routines, Days of the week, Weather and Seasonal changes
Discuss daily routines and plans for the week ahead. Learn about dates and numbers, days of the week, months of the year, weather and seasons
🏫Read our Supporting School Readiness HOT TOPIC for tips on how to prepare children for school
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