Last Updated on July 19, 2022 by Kimberly Crawford
Going to school is a very important moment for the child and their parents. Many children are eager and excited to go to first grade, but not everyone has an easy time with this change. They might face a lot of unexpected difficulties. Sometimes you will have to refer to edit my paper online services to help your child to handle all the writing assignments. That is why you need to prepare your kid for all the possible challenges and show all your support and love.
The year before school allows parents to prepare their child for school, not only by buying everything for successful learning but also by putting into it all the necessary knowledge and skills.
In this material, we will tell in detail how to prepare your child for school, and what they need to know and be able to do, including the physiological, intellectual, social, and psychological readiness for school.
School readiness or should I prepare my child for school?
Each of the necessary skills for successful study and socialization does not appear instantly, so we prepare for school in a planned and even manner, distributing the load. Taking care of preschool preparation, it is necessary to try to cover all the required skills and abilities to lay the necessary foundation for the future first grader.
So is it necessary to prepare the child for school? It is necessary to prepare your child for school, but you don’t need to try to get ahead of the school program by studying it even before the beginning of the school year.
This is already the task of the teacher, but for parents, the main thing is to teach the necessary basics for successful learning and interaction with future classmates. If you overdo it and give too much knowledge, it can have the opposite effect and lead to a loss of interest, because the kid will just be bored at lessons.
In addition to standard preparations for the first grade, it is recommended to find out what exactly will be included in the curriculum, and what textbooks and methods will be used to teach the first grader.
What does a child need to know and be able to do before going to school for the first grade?
Parents themselves should understand that preparing children for school is necessary and it is necessary to approach it responsibly, thereby facilitating an already difficult period of adaptation.
The main task of home preschool preparation of children is to develop all the necessary skills and abilities that will facilitate the process of becoming a student. Below we will tell you what your child should know for school. Particular attention should be paid to the following aspects:
Speech development
This includes not only the production of all the sounds but also the development of narrative speech. As training is suitable to come up with stories, conversations on various topics, and so on. The child needs to learn how to structure their speech so that it is coherent, consistent, and coherent.
Thinking process
Communicate a lot with your kid, show them different objects and phenomena, and talk about their commonalities and differences. Even before entering school, a child should be able to compare phenomena, summarize similar objects in one group, find similar objects on a certain feature or remove a mismatched object from a group of objects.
Memory
Although at this age children are receptive to new information, the question of memory development also needs to be approached very responsibly. For this enough to teach your baby poems and songs, ask them to repeat the sentence you just voiced, etc. There are also a lot of didactic materials and games that are aimed at improving random memorization.
Motor skills
Performing all actions thoughtfully and accurately is an easy task for an adult, but not for a child. It requires good concentration and coordination. A variety of practices and games will help develop these skills, including coloring, hatching, scribbling, and other activities where neatness is required.
Concentration, attentiveness, and diligence
You can develop these skills with systematic and regular practice. Start small – short lessons in the same place and at a certain time. Further, you can increase the time without a break, but not longer than 20 minutes.
Mathematical knowledge
It is enough to teach your baby the basics: counting to 10, subtracting and adding within these limits, listing numbers from lesser to greater and vice versa, identification of missing or repeating numbers.
You can practice counting skills in normal life, counting objects on walks, adding and subtracting. In addition, it is recommended to acquaint the child with the concepts of the size of objects, and weight, as well as to teach the child to navigate the time by conventional and electronic clocks.
Knowledge of the surrounding world
According to the researchers of the best writing services, even before school, the child should know what country they live in, in what city and at what address, as well as the capital of their country.
They must learn the seasons, months, and their sequence, in what intervals the day is divided into, how many hours are in them, how many days in the week, and their sequence. It is important to know about nature, the main species of plants and animals, road rules, and existing professions. The child should know his or her name, how old they are, what address they live at and with whom, and know the full names of their parents and their occupation.
The main principle of successful preparation of children for school is regularity, lack of coercion, and compliance with specific rules. This will allow the child to achieve the necessary results and instill the discipline that will be needed for regular schoolwork. This is exactly what a child needs to know going into first grade.
Physiological readiness of a child for school
Interest in sports, physical education, and physical development, in general, should begin to instill in the child long before school. In this case, the best shows itself by personal example. It’s enough to actively spend time together with your baby at home and on walks.
Also, you can take the child to a sports group – there are a lot of them, even in small towns: from dancing to wrestling. You can try several options so that the child will choose the one they like. Physiological readiness of the child for school can be considered most successful if they are eager to take classes, remind you of them and try not to miss a single one.
Intellectual readiness of the child for school
Do not fixate only on reading, writing, and counting – this is more of a teacher’s task. You need to focus on proper thinking, teaching your child to analyze the information they receive and to reason about different topics. Your three main tasks in intellectual training are as follows:
- Create a comfortable environment for receiving new information and interest in it. A variety of recreational activities, reading interesting and educational literature, watching videos, walking, and visiting interesting places will help. So the child will understand that the world – it’s an infinite number of amazing things and want to learn more and more.
- Talk to your child as much as possible, tell them how to communicate with their elders and peers, and how to behave with smaller children. Also, help them to reason with their own opinions by showing that you listen to them and enjoy talking to them. This way they will learn to express their point of view, listen to yours and, like you, enjoy the process of communication.
- Develop logic and teach non-standard thinking. This is very important in solving everyday problems and in life in general. So the kid will be able to look at standard situations from a non-standard perspective, develop critical thinking, the mind becomes more flexible, and will be better able to absorb the information. Special tasks for logic and creativity are perfect for developing logical thinking.
Laying in the kid the correct intellectual basis, you facilitate it to school. In addition, such a pastime perfectly trains concentration, attentiveness, and diligence, which are so important in school. Now there are a lot of demonstration materials, thanks to which you can make the process more interesting and varied.
Social readiness of children for school
The personal (social) readiness of children for school allows you to help them more easily adapt to the different formats of learning and communication, which are very different from what they are used to in kindergarten and at home. Also, the child’s personal readiness for school makes them more aware and open to new knowledge, the world around them, and themselves.
Telling your child about school should not focus only on the positive or negative aspects of learning. If you, for example, will only talk about how school is cool, fun, and cheerful, faced with reality – the child will just be disappointed. After all, school does not consist of fun, it’s a lot of work and responsibility, which should understand by the future first grader.
The correct position – the most detailed and unbiased acquaintance of the child with the school, its requirements, routines, and other details. Here are some tips on social preparation of the preschooler for parents:
Allow the child themselves to get acquainted in crowded places, while explaining that without the presence of adults, you can’t have contact with other people’s adults.
Periodically visit very crowded places like entertainment centers, supermarkets, train stations, and airports – this teaches your child not to get lost in crowds.
- Teach your child to deal with criticism by explaining that it may refer to a situation or the result of their work, but that it has nothing to do with them personally. Developing correct positive self-esteem in your child also helps.
- Teach them to express their thoughts correctly, and act out scenes of them asking for help from a stranger, asking questions, etc.
- Develop in your child a healthy desire to compete and win, discuss possible failures and instill the correct view of them.
- Allow them to work on their own. If your toddler needs praise, you can start by encouraging each step of his or her activity, and eventually praise only the result.
- Create a clear routine, so that the child learns to dedicate a certain amount of time to one activity. This routine must alternate between quiet and active activities. This will help your child adapt to the lesson-changing mode.
- To help your child feel more confident, you can teach them all the basic skills that will be needed: holding a pen correctly, doing tasks step by step, and so on.
Psychological preparation of children for school
Even if your child is calm, serious, and has the right self-esteem, this does not guarantee that the adaptation to school will go smoothly. Every new stage and change is stressful even for an adult, and even more so for a kid. That is why the psychological preparation of the school child is very important. To help adapt to the unusual school life as easily as possible, it is important to teach:
Positive thinking and emotion management
Moderate control of emotions such as resentment, rage, and anger will allow your child to avoid impulsive words and actions. You have to put in the child’s head that unpleasant situations happen, but positive thinking allows you to find the right way out. Simulation of various situations and their parsing will help. This is the basis of the psychological preparation of children for school.
Concentration and attentiveness
The ability to bring things to an end is an important ability, which will be an assistant not only at school but also throughout life. Set pleasant and neutral tasks that take half an hour to complete. If they can work on one task for at least 20 minutes, they have succeeded.
Responsibility and focus on results
Dream together, set goals, and help your child to achieve them, regardless of possible obstacles. Initially, you can stimulate the kid from the outside, but gradually you have to explain to them that the best motivator – is yourself and your desires.
Answering the question of how to psychologically prepare the child for school, it is important to understand that we are preparing for school at home and you have to start there. Give your child various tasks, make them responsible for completing the tasks they can do, and let them do chores at home that they do.
We have taken apart all the points and answered extensively the question of how to properly prepare a child for school. But in the end, we would like to remind the main rule – systematicity. Even if you can not devote a lot of time to the preparation, give less, but certainly every day.
The child needs to get used to the new atmosphere – it will help them to have a successful start on their way to becoming a pupil of elementary school. Also, whether you are working with your child or just talking, show your love and patience. You are the main authority and confidant for the child, and it depends on you to develop their interest in new knowledge and sciences.