It’s that time and it’s come round far too quickly. Your baby is going to school. But before they get there it would really help for you to know he or she is ready for this. 

If your child has been attending ECE then they’ve had a good lead in. Kindy is designed to prepare them in the transition for starting primary school but there are also steps you need to be taking at home to make the move smoother and hopefully easier for all of you.

The School Starter

There are several skills and knowledge bases it really helps for your child to have when they start school. There is an expectation that your ‘school starter’ should at least :

• Know their name

He or she should be able to recognize their own name when it is written down and be able to tell you and write down at least the first letter in their first name.

• Be on their way to learning the alphabet

Your child should be able to begin and possibly end the alphabet. If there are ‘fuzzy’ parts in the middle, this will come. He or she should also be able to identify at least half the letters in the alphabet when they are written down.

• Know basic colour names.

It is helpful for your child to go start school knowing the basic colours of things, red, blue, orange, yellow, green, black, brown, pink and purple.

• Know basic item names.

There is an expectation that your child will know the names of basic items they would find in a home or school. These might be things like ‘chair’, ‘table’, ‘door’, ‘floor’, ‘mat’, ‘tap’, ‘toilet’ and so on. Labeling these things at home in the lead up to school will help with this.

• Use basic manners

By the time your child starts school, he or she should be using acceptable manners, things like ‘Thank You’, ‘Please’, ‘Excuse me’, ‘May I…’, ‘No thank you’ and so on.

They should be used to sharing also and know that it is only acceptable to treat other people the way they themselves want to be treated.

They need to realize that it is not okay to shout at others in order to show their disapproval or to gain their own way.

• Be toilet trained.

When your child reaches school age he or she needs to be out of nappies and using a toilet. (It doesn’t matter if your child is not dry through the night when they start school.)

The ‘School Starters’ Mummy’s and Daddy’s

There may be things you need to be prepared for when your 5 year old (or perhaps 6 year old) begins primary school. You can start by working on the things mentioned in the list above. Help as much as you can by labeling things around the home, having your son or daughter write their name in the new books and so on. There are other things you can do to put your mind at ease; to know they are safe.

Label all school clothes and gear

Read Back to School – Labelling.

Make a daily plan

Talk each morning about who’s taking to school and who’s picking up and where you’ll meet.

Get to know friends and friend’s parents.

Become familiar early on with who is in your child’s class and who their parents are. Ask for phone numbers and addresses and form some relationships with them.

You can also expect a much more tired little school monster in the first term of school. It may take them a while to adjust to the long school day and in the height of summer.



Article What is School Ready? written by Kylie Valentine, qualified NZ secondary school teacher.

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