Guest Author - Paula Petrie

Getting ready for that first year of school is exciting and scary. It involves trips to the mall for a shiny new backpack, awesome outfits, and cool shoes. But that’s the easy part. Moms worry if their children are really ready for independence or how they will handle long days away. While getting the right pencils and interesting smelling markers may help a child’s confidence, there are still a couple of important points to consider.

Many schools offer a list of expectations for the child starting school. There are just as many schools that don’t. Some children just haven’t been ready up to this point for structured school activities. But it is in that child’s best interest to spend the summer months helping him with pencil holding practice, and by working on activity books when the sun is too high for outdoor play. Making simple crafts that require children to cut designs out of paper helps improve hand coordination as well.

The ability to say or sing the alphabet, and identify the letters is very important. To know and identify numbers, one through ten, will help a child immeasurably. These skills not only help with confidence, but they allow a child to keep up with classmates over the coming months. Not being able to identify letters early on, can cause a child to struggle with reading skills for years. Taking this time too practice will also show a child that concentration and stillness are upcoming requirements.

Reading stories to your children helps them bring into perspective “scary” emotions. A good emotional vocabulary helps children understand their own thoughts and feelings, and how others think and feel as well.

Dr. Rebecca Novick, author of Many Paths to Literacy: Language, Literature, and Learning in the Primary Classroom believes many children enter school without the social and emotional readiness to succeed.

“Parents should help preschool children express their thoughts, feelings, and opinions verbally and in writing,” she says, “to give them a better start toward emotional stability and a foundation to succeed in school.”

Novick believes one of the best activities to help kids develop the language they need to deal with emotions and behavior, is reading stories that offer opportunities to discuss emotions, then relate the emotions in the story to the children’s lives and experiences.

Novick says, “Words can help children sort out their feelings, such as anger, disappointment, hurt, and confusion, and helps them come to terms with their own behavior. You help your child understand the concept of emotion, as well as increase his vocabulary,”