Preparing a first-grader for school
In just three and a half months, fresh students will be sitting at the desk. There’s not much time left to prepare them for school life.
Next week, the country’s schools will host a meeting for the dadmoms of those children who will sit at the desks for the first time on September 1. Usually parents wonder what to buy for school, whether an orange shirt fits the blue uniform, whether the teacher is strict. It is clear that everyone wants to prepare in the best possible way. But what really needs to be done to prepare your child for school?
Household skills
These are some of the most important skills that a child should have by first grade. The child should be able to keep himself and his things more or less in order, otherwise it will be difficult for him to orient himself in school life, because there will be no teacher or babysitter nearby. But there will be classmates who are willing to laugh at failures and misses.
Here’s a list of skills that the future schoolboy should have. Check to see if your child is ready:
- Comb your hair and wash your hands (no reminder).
- Pack your own backpack. You can buy it in advance to practice collecting your favorite toys, books and coloring with pencils for trips to the cottage.
- Fold the sports uniform and change carefully, not stuff it in a backpack with a coma, hang things in the closet, and send the dirty to the wash.
Get dressed and undress yourself. You will have to tie an uncomfortable scarf yourself in winter!
Button up the buttons and hooks on the pants, tie the shoelaces. If a child comes out of the toilet with his fly unbuttoned… well, you got it.
By the way, teaching a child to use the public toilet carefully is also a skill to master.
Preparedness of the child for learning
at school
First-graders’ parents are panicking. There’s nothing left until the first call. “Komsomolka” rushes to calm down and gives recommendations on what to do to make the child 100% ready for school.
Psychological skills
The classic problem of a first-grader – closer to night it turns out that by tomorrow it was necessary to mould the Kremlin from cones and plasticine. Or to make a genealogical tree with photos of all relatives to the seventh knee. Or bring glue from the saliva of swallows and brushes from the tail of a wild lama, which in the afternoon with fire can not be found.
- Very often children have inattention – they are distracted in class and forget about their homework, – says the psychologist. – You can help your child to cope with this. Train during the summer – write small lists of cases for a day, a week, and give the child so that he could check all the things done. You can also give them routine tasks to develop their perseverance, such as asking them to help pick up some buckwheat or hanging up dry laundry. And train your attentiveness – notice with your child how many steps from the front door of your house to the elevator, what color the car passed by. You can do it in the format of a game, during walks.
In addition, for the child to be comfortable at school, he must be able to tolerate and discipline. Otherwise, it will be a bit difficult for him to sit through even one lesson. To help your child, teach him to follow the rules. To do this, you can play games with the rules, including board games – snake-trees, “Monopoly”, “Uno” and others.
In general, it is important to talk to your child about school. How it is and what happens, who obeys whom. Why do they go there at all – to learn new things, to become smarter.
Is the baby ready?
Legally, a child can be enrolled in the first grade if he or she is 6 years and 6 months old by September 1. They can accept earlier if they’re ready for it:
The main indicator of CogAT Grade 1. For a healthy and curious child, school with all the attributes is just a magnet.
Visual and motor coordination. Without her it will be difficult for the child to learn to write. To develop it, it is possible to pass with the child mazes on paper (all these “show the hedgehog the shortest way to the fungus”), to encircle subjects on a contour, to draw on stencils, and even to untangle balls.
Logical memory. It is necessary that the child does not jagged the texts and formulas, and understand their meaning. To train her, you can talk to your child about the order of actions in everyday tasks – what is done in what order and why.
Analytical thinking. The future first-grader should be able to distinguish between parts and the whole, and also understand where the cause and the consequence are. Word-playing games are useful here, for example, making as many small words as possible out of one big word. You can observe nature together and explain to the child why and how it rains, thunder rumbles, and so on.
If the child is not ready, doctors and psychologists recommend another year in the preparatory group. Especially since the federal law “On Education” allows this: the upper age limit for first-graders is 8 years (if the child is healthy and there are no other restrictions).