School Readiness

Great ideas to help prepare your kids for school

What you need to know as a parent about ensuring that your child is ready for school. We have many tips for ensuring that your child can enjoy and perform well at school.

Preparing to Read and Write

• Read to your child every day.Read their favourite books and introduce new books regularly.
• Visit the library and participate in story time sessions.
• Sing songs and nursery rhymes.
• Cut out letters and make words with them.
• Point out signs and read them aloud to your child.
• Practise saying your address and phone number.
• Turn a tissue box into a mail box and send notes to each other,
• Take turns in reading the notes to each other.
• Cut out letters of the alphabet and then make words with them.

 

“As an educator in the Southern Midlands, Kelly and CfC have supported my program to the benefit of all children in our community! As one of those parents who has had access to the programs offered I am very grateful.”

Vanessa, mother of 2 and Early Childhood Educator, Oatlands

Literacy

• Literacy includes reading, talking, listening and writing.
• Children love listening to stories and learning to read.
• To make it more fun, use different voices and sounds.
• Talk about the pictures and encourage children to think ahead about how they story might end.

Preparing to Count

• Count groceries as they are put into the supermarket trolley.
• Roll a dice and ask your child to count the dots.
• Lay on the ground and count clouds. Draw the funniest cloud or find a cloud that looks like a face, then give it a silly name.

Numeracy

• We need numeracy because numbers are everywhere and we use them every day.
• Play number games and activities including shopping games, teaching the time on the clock and time concepts.
• Cook recipes using measurements.
• Play “spot the shape”.
• Play games about money helps with learning how to budget.

Language

• Never underestimate a child's capacity to develop a wide vocabulary.
• Children learn more words in their first 5 years of life than in any other period.
• Encourage this by using new words in sentences and then explaining the meaning.
• Did you know that there are between 3000-6000 languages spoken in the world today?

Human language is fascinating, and we can find it not only in words but in pictures, codes and even in computers which have a language all of their own. We need language to communicate with everyone, to share ideas and information with our friends and importantly, to express ourselves.

Mem Fox Loves Reading to Children because:

“Reading to children makes adults and children happy and calm. It has amazing benefits for school, for life and for self-esteem.”

Mem suggests parents read to their children three stories a day, which could mean the same story three times. She says if parents do this we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.