For many parents, the first day of school can be a stressful time. Whether it’s getting their child ready for the new year or trying to fit in all the necessary supplies, parents will need some help navigating this first-day jitters. Here are some ideas for making your first day at school as smooth as possible.
The scrapbooks are a great way to help students feel more comfortable on their first day of school.
Make your child’s first day of school more pleasant by creating a scrapbook of all the new things they’ll see.
Even for the very young, transitions are a part of life: from birth and beginning nursery to changing employment and moving home.
As adults, we’ve had enough of these transitions to have a sense of how a new scenario feels and how we’ll deal with it. That is not a luxury that children beginning school enjoy. It’s pointless to tell a four-year-old that they’ll be starting school soon and expect them to comprehend how this will affect their life since they have nothing to compare it to.
It’s easy to think that if your kid has previously spent time in nursery, the transition to school would be smoother. It’s true that being among new kids and adults, as well as knowing that your parents will return later, may make school seem less intimidating.
Nonetheless, every kid faces a significant transition to school. Assembly, PE, the headteacher, and dinner-hall are all abstract ideas to a four-year-old who has never encountered them before. Literacy, citizenship, and mealtime supervision are all things to consider….
However, there are a number of strategies that may be used to smooth the transition to school and establish a pleasant familiarity and positive connections with the school environment even before they begin.
One method is via a house visit, which we’ll discuss later in this series. If your kid is beginning school in September, the most effective (and easy) tool is to create a My New School scrapbook.
Many schools have an open day in June or July for students who will begin school in September. Snap your camera with you when you go to yours and take a lot of photos, then print them off and put them in a scrapbook with your kid.
By having the book on hand and going through it with your kid over the summer, you’ll be assisting them in acclimating to their new school and offering a resource for the many questions they’ll have. My kid wants to know whether his new school will offer dinosaur toys, which may seem to be a minor concern. But what counts is that he finds this issue important.
Because we hadn’t yet visited our oldest son’s new school, the only clothing peg I could picture was at his nursery. But this is the kind of stuff you’re searching for: the things and locations that make up a schoolchild’s daily routine.
Make a beautiful scrapbook with these helpful hints
When you’re taking the photos, think about the school day and construct a timeline. When you look at the book, you may start talking about new routines: ‘First we come through the gate, then we go through the playground and into the school.’ This is the entrance to our classroom. This is where we sit for the check-in and the tales. The toys in my new classroom are seen below. This is my personal favorite.’
Make captions for each image so you may practice reading and writing while you’re on vacation. It also implies that the book may be read as a narrative. Your kid will be so pleased with the book that he or she will want to read it to everyone who comes to visit.
Take photos of everything and anything. Almost anything may serve as a conversation starter. Here are a few suggestions:
- the entrance to the school
- Climbing frame and playground
- entrance to a school
- the front desk
- corridor
- the entrance to the classroom
- classroom
- teaching assistants and teachers
- Chair for a teacher
- rug on which the kids sit
- desks
- a book shelf
- pegs
- toilets
- a dining room
- your kid in his or her new outfit
Wearing a uniform is one of the most exciting aspects about beginning school. To the kid, it seems to be an adult getting ready for work. Trying on the uniform at home helps to create a sense of excitement and a sense that school is something unique to look forward to.
Check with the school to see whether taking photos is permitted, and avoid include other children in your photographs. Schools, understandably, have stringent policies in place.
Give your kid a camera as well; you can be sure that their pictures will catch something unexpected. We can never predict what will be important to our children, which is why this approach is so effective. Your child’s tea set in the home corner may be the topic of conversation all summer and the reason they jump into class on the first day.
Encourage your kid to see himself or herself in school. What are they going to do? Which toy would they like to use?
Fiction may help you fill in the gaps in your scrapbook. Try mild classics like Janet and Allen Ahlberg’s Starting School and Shirley Hughes’ Lucy and Tom At School.
Not only for the classroom
You may find yourself making many more scrapbooks together as you begin to recognize the numerous changes and new events in your child’s life. Make a book about a summer vacation, a move, or a trip to the dentist; youngsters are fascinated by anything that is based on their own personal experiences. They’ll spend hours poring over these books and want to make their own, which is a wonderful way to encourage them to use scissors, cut out and stick, and, of course, learn to write.
Good luck with your scrapping!
