Preparing for your child's first day of Preschool may not be easy. When children enter a new school setting, with new faces, it can create anxiety for the child and for the parents. To help alleviate the stress, there are many things you can do as parents to help your child feel more comfortable in this new transition.
Before the first day, it may be important to have conversations about going to preschool and being a preschooler. However, it doesn't have to be just conversations. Sometimes children understand emotions and events through literacy, as it sets a third person point of view, and that third person is the character attending preschool in the literature.
Here are some books that may be helpful to read together as a family before beginning the first day.
Another way to incorporate a learning enriched environment of your little one(s) to help get a sense of learning setting, is by providing multiple learning materials, including play manipulative, lots of literature, and even role playing! Parents are child(ren)'s first teachers at home. By playing a role of a teacher and student can help the child understand what is expected of them when attending a real preschool. Role playing at home can included, signing "Good Morning" songs, sitting together on a play rug, introducing various learning items, encouraging your child to ask questions and make predictions, and even visit the preschool for a little bit before the official first day. Visiting the school time to time as drop-in is a great way to see the new faces they will be interacting with more frequently through the days the child attends school.
Below, you will find many of our favorite items to learn and play with. We hope that you would be able to use these wonderful playing materials in your home as well!
Creating a play area that is similar to a preschool setting can be helpful for the child to become comfortable with sitting with friends and the teachers. In classrooms, learning center rugs say a lot to the children. As children sit down, they are already exposed to learning visuals such as: colors, numbers, shapes, and letters! Here is an example!
You will also be able to find some of the learning manipulatives items on Amazon.com!
Magnetic Letters Numbers Shapes Colors Board Set :
Math Link Cubes :
PicassoTiles 100 Piece Set 100pcs Magnet Building Tiles Clear Magnetic 3D Building Blocks :
Skoolzy Nuts and Bolts Fine Motor Skills - Occupational Therapy Toddler Toys - Montessori Building Construction Kids Matching Game for Preschoolers - Jumbo 24 pc Set with Backpack & Activity Download :
Rainbow Counting Bears with Matching Sorting Cups, Bear Counters and Dice Math Bears Game :
Alphabet Soup Sorters :