It’s time to stop over-thinking school readiness and just let them be

Jenni Gaffney, Director of Operations, Young Academics

This article originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph

It’s that time of year again. The time when parents are preparing for the start of ‘big school’ with shopping trips for school shoes, uniforms, lunchboxes, and orientation visits. While it should be a time of excitement, for many it’s a time of angst. But it needn’t be.

Unfortunately, there’s a widespread push for tutoring, learning to read before starting school and setting ‘homework’ for children whose only homework should be play, making up stories, craft, play dough, drawing and building with blocks – the fun stuff.

Of course, pre-literacy and numeracy skills are important tools in the transition to school phase, but counting the apples as they go into the grocery basket or pointing out pictures as a story is read are very different to sitting still at a table writing out lines or spending hours completing reading skills on an iPad. And when it comes to preparing your child to start ‘big school’, hi-tech and hothousing are not the answer.

We all want to send our children through the school gates feeling confident, calm and excited, not pressured or panicked, and the key to getting there lies in encouraging a genuine interest in learning through play, not instilling the idea that school is stressful, competitive and all about getting things ‘right’.?

That doesn’t mean parents can’t do anything to help prepare, it just means that the transition phase should be engaging, relaxed and positive – tempered with some normal first-day nerves.

At Young Academics, we care for thousands of children, and our professional educators consistently share the same advice for parents of children about to start school – and it’s nothing to do with teaching them to read, write or spell.? The key skills teachers want children to come to school with are split into two categories: practical and social.

On the practical side, opening and closing lunchboxes and containers, knowing how to re-fill drink bottles, recognising names to locate belongings and confidence in toilet hygiene and handwashing are essential skills for a smooth start. As for social skills, taking turns, knowing that it’s ok to make mistakes or lose at games, being able to express feelings (in words) are key.

There is a huge variation in children’s abilities in the lead-up to starting school, just like there’s no hard and fast timeframe for starting to crawl, walk or talk. And, just like those early milestones, there’s plenty of parental anxiety about what’s normal, and what’s not.

In my experience, the most meaningful actions parents can take to give their child the best possible start to schooling are simple, but definitely effective: reading to them daily; letting them choose books they’re interested in at the local library; using syllable clapping to ‘sound out’ words; playing

games like ‘I Spy’ when out and about; and incorporating numbers into daily life, like counting dogs in the park or dots on a dice during board games.

Let’s not overcomplicate things. Let’s not rush learning and development. Let’s encourage play-based learning. And let’s try to enjoy this special time in our children’s lives.??