Starting nursery or big school can be quite daunting for little ones, particularly if they are entering into a new environment. Here are a few things you can do to help ease the transition in the lead up to school starting.

Calendar

Most children handle change better when they know what to expect. Having a calendar indicating which day school begins will give them ample time to prepare themselves for the big day. We love our Moon Picnic perpetual calendar.

Books

Books are always a good way to help prepare children for new situations. For a book on what to expect, we read Starting School. It introduces different aspects of school that a child will likely encounter in their school environment. All About Friends is a great book on friendship. As our children become more independent from us, friendships have a huge impact on their mental well-being. This booke is a really good one to keep revisiting as they learn to navigate friendships with other children.

Self-Care

Once children are over 3 years old, staff to child ratio in childcare settings reduces. Helping your child learn to do things independently will give them more confidence when they are away from you. These include:

Going to the toilet
Washing their hands
Using tissues
Feeding themselves – If they have school lunches and need to carry and put away their plates/trays. Practice stacking things at home and carrying them short distances.

Dressing and undressing

Shoes – Velcro shoes will be the easiest for your child to put on and take off themselves. If they are still learning to identify which shoe goes on which foot, you can get shoe stickers to put in the bottom of each shoe.

Coats

They say that children as young as 18 months can learn to do the Montessori Coat Flip. You place their open coat on the floor facing away from them. Their hands go into the sleeves and they flip the coat over their heads. See the video below from Apple Montessori School.

Zips and buttons take practice. Larger buttons are easier to do up. Or opt for trousers with poppers until they can confidently do up buttons.

Name Identification

Being able to identify their name will help when looking for their hook and for their belongings. It will also help build their confidence in being independent.

Try this activity:

Write lots of different names on a piece of paper and write your child’s name a number of times. In the first stage of this only have their name starting with that letter.
Give them stickers to place on top of their own name.
Once they can do this reliably, increase the challenge by adding names that start with the same letter as theirs.

Our daughter was 3 years old in this video

Practice the morning routine

We all know how stressful it can be trying to get out of the house in the morning! In the week leading up to school beginning, start practicing the morning routine. For us this means getting up earlier, brushing teeth and getting dressed before going down for breakfast.

Playdates before school starts

If there are children you know who will be attending the same school or pre-school, try setting up a few playdates before school starts so that there are people they know.

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Preparing for School (and Pre-school)