Three Key Steps for Preparing to Transition to School

It can be daunting for your child to finish preschool and transition to school. However, parents and teachers can help to prepare for the shift to big school and let them feel secure and confident at the same time.

Keep Calm
First, make sure that you keep a calm and measured demeanor when talking about starting school. Children pick up on parent anxiety and stress which influence how they feel. If you talk about school like it is an exciting, your child will feel more excited and positive as well.

Be wary of putting too much pressure on your child to learn academic skills like reading, writing, or mathematics before they start school. If they have the basic underpinning skills such as recognising letter sounds or number quantities, this is great! Everything else will be learnt at school. Prematurely pushing them to learn can make them feel stressed. Before they begin school, their focus should be playing and improving social and emotional development. At Falcon British Nursery, children are encouraged to focus on play and emotional development, as this is the best way to prepare them for what is to come at school.

Be Practical
It can help your child to take practical steps towards starting school. Take them to visit the school that they will go to so that they can see what it is like. Show them the route that they will take to school each day and explain where they will play and what they will do in the day. Your child will also need supplies for school such as a new backpack, lunchbox and a pencil case. If you buy these things together it can help your child to get excited about starting. They will then feel like they have more control and input into the process.  Family ties are important. Talk to your child about what school is like and show them photographs from when you were at school. It can also help to talk about memories that you have of being at school so that they understand you have been through it too.

Collaborate with Teachers
The teachers at Falcon British Nursery are experienced at transitioning children into school and have done it many times before. They know what skills your child can work on before your child begins school and will role play what to do at the beginning of big school. Talking to your child’s teachers about your fears or concerns, as well as making a joint plan to best support your child can help the transition to go smoothly.

Building Confidence in 2-4 Year Olds

Why Confidence Matters
A young child that lacks confidence is nervous about trying new things and taking risks.  They are worried about experimenting with things that they do not understand. Risk-taking and exploration are important for building courage.  Risk taking and exploration help children understand that the effort of an attempt is worth more than what actually comes out of the attempt.  They learn that it is okay to fail and try again and that failure is merely a part of learning.  That is resilience and it is a skill your child will need for their whole life. 

Confidence and self-esteem allow your child to stand up for themselves or others when he / she believes something is wrong.  Confidence gives your child the strength to refuse a situation that makes him / her uncomfortable.  Having confidence helps broaden their experience and helps them develop a better understanding of how the world works.

Practical Steps for Building Confidence
These are the steps you can implement to build confidence in your 2-4 year old.

1. Be aware of over praising: When a child receives constant praise for the sake of praise, they can start looking for reward of praise in order to complete a task.  This means they will be doing the task merely for the reward of the praise rather than doing it for the love of trying.  Also, if a child knows they put in little effort and still receives great praise, they will start to question the validity of the praise. Instead parents should praise children for the effort they put in, or praise a child for attempting something, rather than the achievement itself. This will build confidence to try again the next time.

2. Allow children to take risks: Taking risks is vital for building confidence. When children are not exposed to risks or are prevented from trying things, they cannot gain the opportunity or build the confidence to learn what their limits are.  This has negative mental health repercussions.  Helicopter parents do not give a child a good grounding to be prepared for life. Children need to learn to navigate the world on their own so that they can make good choices.  This will give your child the confidence to take risks.

3. Let them make their own choices: If a child makes their own choices when they are little, they will have had a lot of practice making the right decision for themselves when they are older.  Your child will begin to know what they like and what they do not like. Making their own choices gives your child more control over their actions and this builds confidence.

4. Be careful of removing obstacles: If your child is struggling with something, it can be tempting to step in and help them solve the problem. If you feel they are capable of completing something, first let them attempt it. Ensure your child perseveres even if it is difficult.  When trying anything new for the first time, there is a period of time when your child will need to practice doing the activity.  Once they have mastered the activity on their own, they will be brimming with confidence to try something else.

At Falcon British Nursery, children are encouraged to develop independence, make choices, take healthy risks and this builds confidence every day.

Exercise for Young Children: How Active Should They Be?

Our children are often very active when they are young, with seemingly boundless energy. Children should have a certain amount of exercise each day, spent playing games and doing activities that teach them balance, coordination and general fitness.

What Are the Recommendations?

It’s commonly expected that children require the same amount of physical activity as adults, such as 30-60 minutes a few times a week. However, the NHS recommends your toddler or child under 5 should be engaged in as much as 3 hours of activity per day. This includes playing and moving around, running and jumping and more clearly active play such as climbing, chasing, swimming or paddling in water, riding bikes, or playing with a ball.

The CDC also recommends that children get around 3 hours of exercise each day, in particular including activities that support good bone health and bone growth, such as activities that involve jumping and hopping. Physical activity is a major issue for children in many countries and in the US studies have found that only 1 in 3 children are get enough physical activity each day.

Good Physical Activities in the Early Years

Activities for your preschool-aged child should include a wide range of movements, including things that stimulate balance and coordination, as well as aerobic fitness and strength. At Falcon British Nursery, physical activity is a priority and children are encouraged to move daily and play physical games to keep fit and healthy. For cruisers and early walkers, good games can include Simon Says, where children copy the actions of a teacher, or singing action songs such as Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

As your child reaches age two or three, they can begin to play in larger spaces and outdoor areas and should be encouraged to run around and improve balance, such as by playing games like football, catching and throwing, climbing trees, or playing on playground structures. Play spaces that include swings and bars can help children to improve their balance and develop their inner ear, by engaging in activities such as swinging or hanging upside-down.

Exercise is a large part of the Falcon British Nursery curriculum and you can have confidence that your children will meet their activity requirements each day while with the nursery staff. 

10 Activities to Support Creativity in a Young Child

Your child’s imagination is endless. The way your child’s imagination grows depends a lot on their age and general stage of development, as well as their day-to-day environment and the attitudes of their teachers.

One of the most interesting developments at the preschool age, around age 3 or 4, is that children enter Piaget’s preoperational period, a period of creative thinking that is marked by a greater understanding of representational thinking. For instance, children are able to see that symbols, drawings and items can represent something else: for example, they begin to understand that the word “horse” or an image of a horse represents a horse in real life. This is the beginning of a phase in which your child begins to create items or images with the intention of representing the things in their life that they see or think about.

Top 10 Activities for Young Children

1.    Use natural spaces. Outdoor spaces such as grass areas in parks, beaches, wetlands and specialty gardens allow your child to learn to be creative with their play using natural materials, including sticks, rocks, plants, water, or natural surfaces to draw on or interact with.

2.    Drawing outdoors. Taking children outside to draw with chalk or watercolour paints on footpaths or rocks can help to stimulate creativity.

3.    Working with art materials. This is a good way to introduce your child to creative activities and a variety of art materials and canvases helps your child to understand artistic nuances and increase vocabulary.

4.    Finger painting. This is a creative and sensory experience in one. Children can explore the physical and sensory experience of painting with their hands, while increasing their understanding of creative representation and colour.

5.    Glue and glitter. Glue and glitter helps a child increase their fine motor control, as well as experimenting with creative ideas of collage. We recommend purchasing bio glitter that will degrade and will not harm the environment.

6.    Baking. Baking, especially decorating cake or cookies, is a creative way for your child to participate in daily life. They can then give this baking to friends or family and take pride in their skills.

7.    Building with Lego or Duplo. This can help your child to increase their spatial awareness and to be creative with building ideas and transport roleplay (such as building train tracks or lego cars).

8.    Making a theatre play. Your children can build the set, puppets, costumes and think about what the play should be like. This is a holistic experience that covers a lot of creative bases.

9.    Facepaint. Facepaint is an excellent foray into roleplay for children, as well as helping them to be creative with their ideas and skills. They can direct adults as to what they want, or paint their faces themselves.

10.  Dress-Ups. Dress-ups are another good creative activity for preschool-aged children, even creating costumes themselves out of found materials or adult clothing. Children aged 3 and 4 will enjoy dressing up as other characters and will use their costumes as imaginative tools.

Your child can grow their creativity in any number of ways and once they reach the preschool-age of being able to represent objects and ideas creatively, their whole world opens up. At Falcon British Nursery your child will always be encouraged to play creatively and will be exposed to the above ideas each and every day.