Do you have a child about to start kindergarten? We have four suggestions for getting them ready for school.
Jonathan Brill, writing for fatherly.com lists four crucial skills children should have before starting school for the first time.
First, Coping Without Parents Or Siblings. Brill says his kids enjoyed having mom and dad and siblings around…making school a violent change.
He suggests making sure they get time away from family and from their usual support networks enough so that being alone in a classroom isn’t as big of a shock.
Next, Listening For And Responding Well To Verbal Direction And Commands. In a class full of other children, they’ll need to get direction from what teachers say and do and what the other kids are doing.
He calls it one of the key early transition risks.
Then, Socialization. Brill says in the early years, children learn more during recess than in class. He says, be prepared to get more questions about other children than school work.
And finally, Transitions And Independence. Brill made it a point to drop his children off at daycare for an hour or so at a time so they’d have the experience of being in an unstructured play environment with a mixed bag of kids before it happened on their first day. He says that helped them learn to make the right decision in little ways, a dozen times a day.
Brill says all of these areas can be simulated before hand so when your kid gets to kindergarten, they’re not dealing with all of this at once. That might make the first day at school go a little more smoothly.