Nursery is an exciting time for children and parents, but it can also be overwhelming. With some preparation and encouragement, the transition into nursery will be enjoyable and exciting.
Starting Nursery
- It’s important to explain where they’ll be going, what they’ll be doing and for how long.
- Uniform – you can practice together for a few months – dressing/undressing and doing any fastenings.
- Don’t worry, children have varied abilities when they start nursery and we will help them progress at their own level. They don’t need to be able to read, and write before they start.
- Communication and language is important. In those preschool years read to them, share stories, sing songs (nursery rhymes) talk about anything and everything.
Reducing Anxiety
- Talk to your child about starting nursery. What do they think it will be like? What are they looking forward to? Is there anything they’re worried about?
- Find photos of you and other family members at school, and chat about happy times you spent at school.
- Practise the school morning routine, including getting dressed and eating breakfast in time to leave.
Building Skills for Nursery and School
Playing games, role play, dress up, and reading at home will help support your child into becoming happy and confident learners.
Activities you can try could include:
- Playing games that involve taking turns.
- Playing with children who are of similar age to develop social skills.
- Reading books.
- Playing with Alphabet letters.
- Playing with cut out numbers so the child has an awareness of these.
- Using your child’s favourite toys to role-play.
- Painting and drawing, which involve sitting down for short periods of time.
- Constantly talking to your child and listening to their answers will build language and social skills.
- Sing Nursery Rhymes and songs that children like that have repetition in them as these will help them to remember new words.
- Telling or reading stories and poems to your child is an important part of developing an interest in reading. This should be an enjoyable experience for yourself and your child. You should aim to do this for a short period (e.g. 10 minutes at least) every day. When reading a story, encourage your child to talk about the pictures and identify characters.
- Let your child hold the book and turn the pages as you read the story.
- Children often ask for the same story over and over again. This should be encouraged, as it shows an interest in reading, and will assist in developing the language of writing, value your child’s choice and encourage decision making.