For both you and your child, starting school can be an extremely exciting time. It does have its challenges, though, and you can help navigate these more easily and make school more fun by following the suggestions below.
This is a collaborative post
Go and look around first
The first thing that can really help your child adapt to going to school for the first time is making sure they are familiar with their new surroundings. The good news is that most schools do open days or even weekends now, where parents and kids can attend together and get a good look at the school facilities and classrooms.
The benefits of doing this are many and include ensuring that everything feels familiar on the first day, something that can really reduce a lot of anxiety and pre-school worry. Also, making sure your little one knows the building they will be going to school in beforehand, frees them up to focus on other important things like listening to their teacher and making friends.
Let them wear the uniform beforehand
Going from casual clothes to wearing a uniform can be a shock for little ones when they first start school. Especially if they are used to dressing comfortably, or even choosing their own outfits! That’s why it’s a good idea to allow them to properly wear their uniform beforehand.
This means not just letting them try it on for photos, but allowing them to wear their uniform for at least a week or two before they begin school. In this way, your child will get used to wearing these clothes and will become more familiar with getting dressed in them each morning. Additionally, this should give you plenty of time to work out any issues they may have with the uniform, from items being too large or too small, to scratchy tags that need to be cut out.
Practice the routine
Getting ready and going to school every day is a routine that your child will need to get into when they start their educational journey. However, it can be useful to allow them to get into this routine well before their first term starts.
Indeed, the main advantage of this is that it gives both you and your child some grace to get used to getting up at a certain time, having breakfast, getting ready and getting out of the house. After all, the way to get good at anything is to practice it, and not just expect everything to go smoothly the first time around.
Help them with their communication skills
Another way you can help make your child’s transition to school easier them is to make sure they have the communication skills they will need. This is important because they will be away from you for an extended period of time, which means they need to be able to communicate their needs effectively.
Some basic things you can do to help them with this are to make sure they know their first and last names, how to say no, and who to go to if they have a problem. If you are worried that your child’s level of communication is not where it could be for their age, you may want to consider working with a kids speech therapy specialist. Indeed, a specialist can help improve speech clarity, reading and spelling, and confidence, too, which can be very helpful for kids as they begin their school career.
Practice putting their hand up
Also, part of being able to communicate in a school environment, teaching your kids about putting up their hand to ask a question, is crucial before they get to their first day. By doing this, you can help ease the stress of not knowing what to do, and you can also make it easier for them to communicate with adults like their teacher, which should help them avoid being corrected too much, which can be upsetting for little ones.
Happily, it’s pretty easy to practice this at home. For example, you can practice putting up hands before anyone speaks at meal times, and everyone can join in, old or young! Just have one person playing the teacher role, and be sure to teach your child to wait until they have been permitted to speak. You can even let them have a go at the teacher role too, just be sure to explain that it won’t happen this way around at school!
Invest in some labels
Getting your kids to keep track of all their stuff can seem like a real challenge when they first begin school. This is because they will have their supplies, their bags, and their coats to keep an eye on. Not to mention their uniform and gym kit for PE days.
The key to acing this as a parent-child team is twofold. The first is to invest in some great labels and put them in everything, including shoes and socks! Then items can always be easily returned if they go missing. The second part is to understand that mistakes will happen, and that your child will go home with someone else’s jumper, and somebody else will leave with your child’s scarf by accident/ Just be patient when it does happen, as it can be hard for little ones to keep track of all their stuff when they first start school.
Remember, starting school is a process
Last of all, following on from being patient in the last section, it’s vital that both you and your child understand that starting school is a process and not a destination that ends on their first day. What this means is that the first term, year, and even school level will be a time of adjustment for you, and especially for your child. This means that expecting them to be perfect right away is unreasonable, even with plenty of practice of the things mentioned above. The truth of the matter is that you will get things wrong, so will your child, and things will go wrong around them, and it’s important to have a sensible attitude of recognising issues when they arise and constructively solving them without apportioning too much blame. In this way, you can make your child’s first day, week, and year at school much easier and more fun.
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