With children across Australia starting primary school in the next few weeks there is growing concern that many new Kindergarten students are not school ready. With reduced attendance at pre-school as a result of rolling lockdowns, these beginning primary schoolers have not had an opportunity to master the basics in personal and physical development that they require.
So What Can You Do To Help? Here is a simple checklist of things you can do to help your child make their transition from pre-school to ‘big school’ as easy as possible:
Make sure your child has had plenty of interaction with other children and can socialise well.
Pack a lunch box with healthy food and make this part of your regular day.
Talk to your child about what to expect at school.
Make sure they can dress themselves and put on their own socks and shoes (velcro is your friend here).
Play physical games to practice gross motor skills such as throwing, catching, running and jumping.
Practice Fine Motor skills such as cutting, pasting, gluing and painting.
There are many parents who feel that they are not ‘crafty’ people. They have cupboards full of art supplies but don’t know what to do with them or how best to create activities to allow their children to develop the skills they need the most. If this sounds like you - we have our 6 themed craft boxes - dinosaurs, butterflies and bees, gardening and flowers, space, farm life and under the sea. Each box includes everything you need to spend quality device free time with your child while helping them get ready for school and develop the skills they need to excel in a school environment. From being able to follow instructions and sitting still for up to 20 minutes at a time cutting and pasting and the patience required to wait for a piece or artwork to dry before sticking it to the wall.
Each box has been tested to ensure the activities are engaging, fun and age appropriate for children from 4 to 6 years of age. The instructions are provided in the box as laminated cards in step by step written form and, in many cases, with a QR code to a video showing a young child making each craft project to make completing the activities as easy as possible.
In addition to a month’s worth of activities, each box includes a set of magnetic letters and letter handwriting practice sheets to learn each letter’s sound. Lower case letters are used as these are generally easier for little hands to form, more common when reading and pronounced with a letter's sound rather than its name as is needed in reading. A guide to correct pencil grip is provided with each sheet and a pencil and grip are included to assist with this critical part of fine motor development. There are also links in each card set to additional resources you can print from the Learn From Play site based on a book matching the box’s theme.
We know you and your children will love our boxes because they will be having loads of fun and you will love them because you will know that you are providing the skills your child needs to make their transition to school as easy as possible which has so many positive benefits for their future learning
Book Activities
Another concern teachers are expressing surrounding school readiness is children’s knowledge of how to read, care for and enjoy books. With an abundant supply of channels geared towards engaging young children and hundreds of thousands of hours of viewing
available online many children have not developed an understanding of books or the stories they contain.
For this we have our Learn From Play book resources. With more than 100 sets of book resources you are bound to find something suitable for your child. For each book we have created a set of activities your child can complete once they have read the book. These offer an opportunity to practice recognising colours, numbers, fine motors skills, cutting, pasting and following instructions. Designed to replicate school activities these sheets will allow children to really understand what they need to do when they are given a worksheet at school.
This means that you will get to read a book with your son or daughter before completing the activities to allow them to develop their school readiness skills. There are also 3 online games related to each book to develop memory skills, maze and puzzle solving skills with varying levels of complexity available to ensure all children can be catered for.
If you child has a favourite book for which there are no resources yet please let us know so we can create those resources for you. Otherwise please jump in and see which Learn From Play box of set of book resources you will be able to grab today to make sure your little one is school ready.