EDUCATION: STARTING A NEW SCHOOL
How do you prepare your child for their first day at a new school? asks Joanna Moorhead
The summer before my eldest daughter started at primary school, a rather wonderful thing happened. We were having work done on our house, and by chance a friend mentioned that a friend of hers was looking for a house sitter. It suited us perfectly to move out of our home for a few months, to escape the builders’ dust, so we did just that. And our temporary home, as it happened, was next door to the primary school at which Rosie would start in September.
This, it seems to me, is the number one best way to get your child ready for primary school: as much as you can, show rather than tell. Try to be around the school sometimes as the children arrive or as they’re leaving for home; if you have friends with children already there, ask to go along with them sometimes for the drop-off or the pick-up. Give your child every opportunity you can to imbibe the sense that school is an exciting and interesting place to be.
We moved in May, so from then until the end of July she and I would watch, each morning, as the children walked and ran and scootered past our door, in their grey and purple uniforms. They looked happy and excited; they were meeting their friends, having fun. The street would then go quiet until about 10.30am when we’d hear them again in the playground; and then again after lunch, until at 3.30pm they’d all stream out again, and head back home with their mummies and the occasional daddy.
Every child, and every parent, gets a bit nervous before their child starts at a new school. Even after 17 years of being a parent with
I’m sure I talked to Rosie about what it would be like in reception class, and I’m sure I taught her to open her lunch box and get her own shoes on and off and all the other things you’re advised to do before your child’s first day at school; but the truth is that nothing prepared her for school as much as those weeks of simply living next door to it. The experience normalised what was going to be a huge change in her life: it showed her, better than any words from me could, that school was where children went when they were old enough. Watching those happy-looking kids skipping past our door, hearing them calling to their friends and generally picking up a sense that school was fun and exciting, was the best possible way of introducing her to her new life. In time my three younger daughters followed their big sister to that same school, and they – like Rosie – all took it in their stride. They, of course, were well-used to the primary school by then: unlike Rosie, they would be there every morning and every afternoon, dropping off or collecting a big sister or sisters. They would pick up on the excitement and happiness of school by osmosis, seeing their sisters and their friends as they bounced up alongside their buggy – and they’d be drinking it all in.
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Bedfordshire
editor@familiesbedfordshire.co.uk