Reception Readiness - Part 2

Hi all, we hope you’ve had a lovely summer so far and that you and your small folk have enjoyed some of the ideas shared Part 1 of our Reception Readiness blog series (if you havent already checked it out, have a read!) As promised, with just a few weeks left until most schools start, we’ve once again enlisted our very own ‘Miss Rachel’ to help you and your little one feel Reception Ready.

As we said in Part 1 of this blog series, this is not about piling on the pressure to ‘tick off’ a load of stuff your little one needs to learn before starting school. These blogs are designed to give you some ideas for conversations to have, and skills to practise, to help you both feel ready for their new adventure. As a teacher, in my opinion, it is this type of preparation that will benefit your child the most when they start school – not whether they can hold a pencil correctly!

In this blog, we’re going to look at some of the chats to have with your little one and some simple activities to help ease them into the transition of starting school. There will be a lot of change ahead. No matter whether they have been at home with you, or full time at a nursery / pre school, a day at school will feel very different for them. There are new routines to learn, a new busy environment to become familiar with, alongside the myriad of social expectations / demands that school life brings – making friends; getting to know their teachers; adjusting to a classroom of circa 30 children, and a lot more people to meet across the school - even the smallest infant schools feel like a huge sea of new faces when you are 4/5 years old! It’s a big transition and one that could take some time to adjust to – which is completely normal.

By now, you should know the timescale for their start and if they are doing a staggered start to term so you can begin to talk them about how soon they will be starting and what the first few days / weeks will look like for them. Visual cues can really help with this. Perhaps you could make a calendar or a paperchain countdown to help them visualise when they will start? If you count the number of days left and make a paper chain with that number of links with your child, they can take off one link each morning and watch it get smaller as their first day approaches.

To your new school starter, school might be super exciting, or it could well still be a strange concept they feel nervous and unsure of. They will probably have visited their new classroom and have met their teacher, but they likely still don’t fully understand what this means, or appreciate what is to come. If you & your little one enjoy some roleplay action, then playing ‘school’ can be a fun way of engaging them with what a school day may look like. You could use their teacher’s name and pretend to take the register with their soft toys, or let them be the teacher and teach you something. These types of games often open up conversations about the school day and allow you to talk about what they can expect, but if roleplay makes your toes curl, just having these chats whilst you play together or go about your day is just as helpful. Mention their new class teacher, have a chat about what they might be doing over the holidays and how they might be feeling about September. If the school have a website with teacher photos, you could look at it together to familiarise them who their teacher will be and some of the other faces they will be seeing. Could they draw a picture for their new teacher? Sharing about when you started school, how you felt, and what you enjoyed doing, can be a great way of engaging children who are more reluctant to talk about it – they generally love hearing all about when Mummy and Daddy were little!

Taking some time to walk the route to their new school, or driving to a nearby spot and walking past is also a great idea to do now. They can see where they will be going and you can point out what you can see and what they will do there – the playground for breaktime, the field for doing PE lessons, the way into their classroom. You might even bump into other children doing the same thing with their parents too!

It’s also a good time to start thinking about some of the belongings that they will need when they go to school. They may have a school bookbag, or you may be able to choose a bag together. If they’ll have a bookbag that will look identical to every other one in the class, it’s a good idea for them to choose a keyring that you can put on to help them recognise theirs. Taking them shopping to choose a new water bottle and snack pot or two is another lovely idea and will help them feel more excited about taking them to school. Minaym have some brilliant personalised bottle bands to pop on a water bottle. https://minaym.co.uk/products/bottle-bands Your child can choose the colour, the font and a little image to go next to their name. Name stickers often come off in the wash but these can be used year after year.

Towards the end of the summer is a great time to try on their new school uniform to help them get used to it. Get everything washed, named & hung in their wardrobe now so it’s ready and looks familiar; have a few trying on sessions over the next couple of weeks can help, if you have family / friends coming to visit you could suggest popping it on to show them. Help them put each item on and teach them what to do if you aren’t there. It’s a good idea to show them where their name is in each item too so they know where to look if they can’t find it in the classroom. We also love the Olive and Pip heart shaped patches. They’re little iron hearts which you can personalise with your handwriting and have inside their uniform. It’s a gorgeous idea for some extra reassurance or for popping a ‘mummy kiss’ into their uniform too. https://oliveandpip.co.uk/products/love-note-iron-on-patch-pre-order. When you get their school shoes, encouraging them to wear them around the house can help them feel more familiar and comfier when the start of school arrives. Cutting a large sticker in half and popping half in each shoe can also be a great way of helping them know which goes on the correct foot.

Even the most excited school starter may suddenly start to feel a little anxious and worried about starting school (although many also skip in without a care in the world and remain that way!), it’s important to reassure them that however they feel, is completely normal. Let them know their teacher is excited to meet them and will look after them for you while they are at school. Books are great at this point too, The Colour Monster is one of our favourites, it talks about different emotions and gives each one of them a colour which is a nice way for younger children to refer to how they feel. The book ‘The Colour Monster Goes to School’ talks about all the fun adventures a first day of school can bring and all the emotions that can come along with it. I highly recommend both of them! Usborne Books have a great lift the flap book in their Very First Questions and Answers series called ‘Why do I have to go to school?’ which talks through what to expect during a day at school, and what happens at different times. It’s a lovely book to look through together in preparation and then perhaps look back at to compare their school to once they’ve been going for a few weeks.

Remember, ensuring they feel supported, confident, and ready to head into the classroom is the best way that you can prepare your tiny humans for school. They are going to do SO much learning is so many different ways in the first year ; opening up the lines of communication and ensuring they know they can talk to you about whatever is in their head, however tiny or insignificant it may seem most of the time, means that they are more likely to talk to you about the big stuff when it happens. Hopefully this blog has given you a few ideas to help guide you through the coming weeks and help create the opportunity for some reassuring chats with your little one.

Any questions just drop us a DM or an email and we’ll be back in just under 2 weeks for the final instalment in our Reception Readiness series.