August and September brings with it an anxious time for parents up and down the country, as little ones prepare to move onto the next leg of their Early Years experience.  

But did you know, that prep for Primary begins long before your little ones leave CC Nurseries Group?

Our pre-school rooms are the perfect environments in which to help children flourish for the next step on your child’s educational journey.

Alongside building on the obvious educational skills needed for a smooth transition (such as basic numeracy and literacy skills, mark making, language etc), our teams spend time giving our children the life skills and confidence needed to leave us happy and prepared for what’s to come.

As part of the pre-school rooms, our teams regularly set up provocations designed to promote vocabulary and key words relating to school. These can include examples of school uniform as an example.

Routines are introduced, and we also continue to hone those basic life skills – from dressing independently, to toileting and skills for eating socially – all vital areas that our children are introduced to across the Nursery from an early age.

We also finish each year with a brilliant graduation celebration, which helps to celebrate their successes from across the year/s and helps them to feel positive about moving to school.

There’s also plenty of things that you as parents and carers can do to assist in the process. We asked our practitioners from across the group to share best practice for our grown ups on how else to support the transition to ‘big school’ – and this is what they told us:

“Encourage independence. Children will be asked to do many things at school for themselves, encourage your child to dress and undress independently, to feed themselves using a knife and fork, go to the toilet independently, wash their hands and tidy away their toys, and help them feel prepared for school routines.”

“Encourage children to try and get themselves dressed and undressed and putting on their own shoes and coats. Some schools have group chats for parents of children who are joining in the same year, might be good to organise some play dates with those children, so that they will be familiar to them when they start school. Toileting is also a big one at school, make sure children are able to wipe themselves clean after using the toilet, most schools are not allowed to help with this!”

“Support children to openly talk about and share their worries, excitement, and hopes for school. Talking and looking at school uniform, pictures of the school they will be going to etc will support and ease the transition as children slowly become more familiar with the change.”

Remember, all of our pre-school teams are here to help and guide both the children and our parents and families – so please do feel free to ask us questions, either in person or via the Famly app should you have any issues or concerns, or are simply looking for a reassuring word or two.

We would like to wish all of our children moving onto the next leg of their journey the best of luck and know that you will succeed in all that they do.