Starting school: Activities for families at home!
School can be a big transition for young children. It’s an exciting time, the very start of their school journey!
Check out this blog written by our Clinic Director and senior Occupational Therapist to read more about for skills children need when starting Prep.
Let’s talk about what you as parents and carers can do at home to set your child up for success in Prep.
Boost your child’s speaking by modelling language
Your child will be speaking to their teacher and lots of new peers. To boost your child’s speaking, you can:
- Talk about what you and your child are doing as you’re doing something
- Talk about what you are thinking, and what your child might be thinking
Play activities to try at home:
Help your child follow the steps in a routine
At school, your child will follow daily routines in the classroom and playground. To help them get used to following routines, try:
- Saying 1-2 steps at a time – keep your sentences short
- Reminding your child what to do along the way
- Writing/drawing out the steps
- Modelling the actions first
Play activities to try at home:
Help your child play with others
Your child will be learning to make new friends at school next year. Through play at home, you can:
- Show your child the possibilities of play
- Copy your child
- Then suggest small but new ideas
- Role play – pretend you are another student
- Introduce yourself
- Make comments as you play
- Top tip: use ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘we’ language e.g. “I am building, you have a block, we can make a tower”
- Introduce small problems in play
- Solve them together
Play activities to try at home:
Practice tabletop activities
At school, your child will start to do lots of activities at their tables. To help them build their attention and focus, you can:
- Start small and build up the time (e.g. start with 1 minute)
- Let your child know the time limit on the activity
Play activities to try at home:
Quality time and connection is the best first step to setting your child up for success. These activities can be used as inspiration for what you and your child can do together at home.
If you have further questions about school readiness, please contact Cooee Speech Pathology on 3265 4495 today and our friendly Client Care team can help.
Written by Speech Pathologist Robbie Corgat, and Occupational Therapist Jaime Siu