Getting Your Preschooler Ready for Big School: 4 Essential Skills

Your preschooler’s entry into big school marks a turning point in both your lives. This signals your child’s first steps towards growing up.  A mix of excitement and anxiety wells up inside you as you wonder how your child will fare in this new environment.  Is your child ready skills-wise, you may ask. Parents with older children have horror stories about how their child was expected to already know how to write, identify all letters and numbers, and even read before entering big school.  
While big school teachers would appreciate that children come in already able to recognize and identify some letters and numbers, this is not their primary concern.  There are other essential skills that may seem insignificant, but are actually as important (or even more so) than academic skills.
Below are some of the skills that parents can help develop in their preschoolers before entering big school:

Independence (being left alone)
Developing self-help skills in a child is important before entering big school, but is often overlooked by parents because it becomes very easy to do things for your child.  In big school, the teacher or teacher aide may not have the time to do this.  Give your child ample opportunities at home to practice independence by packing away his toys after playing, throwing trash in the garbage, putting on his own clothes, sitting down at the table and feeding himself, and going to the toilet and washing his hands on his own.

Communication and the ability to listen and follow directions
A child who can express himself verbally will tend to fare better in big school because he will be able to articulate his needs and wants readily, answer questions, make guesses, offer insight, and share experiences. Along with being able to communicate verbally, your child should also be able to listen and follow simple directions.  Since directions will usually be given verbally, it is crucial that your child knows what the words mean and how they are used in context so that she will know what to do.  To be able to listen, your child also needs to be able to stay still and focus.  
A great way to help your preschooler build his vocabulary, foster listening skills, and increase attention span is by reading a lot of books with him, singing songs and chants together, helping him label things he sees when you’re riding in the car or taking a walk, and encouraging him to use his own words when he needs something or wants to go somewhere.

Click here to read on about social interaction and skills in movement.

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Read on about social interaction and skills in movement.

Social Interaction
Since big school classes are usually large in size, your child needs to be ready to share toys and materials, wait his turn, play in a group, and work out simple problems on his own.  These are very tricky skills for children to learn because, from a young age, children are naturally self-centered.  It is only as they grow up and have experiences in social interaction that they learn the concepts of sharing, borrowing, and turn-taking.  If possible, provide your child with social activities that will help him learn these critical skills by joining playgroups, attending parent-child programs, or by simply modeling these at home when you play together.  Emphasize the magic words such as “please,” “may I,” “excuse me,” and “thank you.”   

Skills in Movement (Gross and Fine Motor Skills)
Being able to control movement (gross- and fine-motor) will be good to enhance before big school.  A child who is not sure on his feet and confident in his movement may cause him to be hesitant to join in games and activities.  Allow your child to run, jump, climb, and the like to help develop gross-motor skills.  To help ensure that your child will like to write or do artwork, help develop fine-motor skills with activities like cutting, gluing, coloring, molding play dough, finger-painting, and sand play.  
In a nutshell, what big school teachers are looking for are children who are curious and look forward to coming to school everyday, who are eager to learn things, who enthusiastically join in activities, and who are not daunted when they make mistakes or do not succeed the first time they try something new. These attitudes can be practiced by your preschooler in play school or at home by developing the four essential skills mentioned in this article.

Sources:
Ann Lousie Diokno is a graduate of Family Life and Child Development from the University of the Philippines and is on the way to getting her Masters in Education from the same university.  She has taught children of Kindergarten age and is currently a lead instructor at The Little Gym for children from 10 months to 12 years old.
Sarah Gil has a Bachelors degree in Interdisciplinary Studies specializing in Communication and Psychology from the Ateneo.  She is working on her Masters in Child Education and Development from UA&P.  She has been teaching children from 10 months to 6 years old at The Little Gym.  

Photography by Jun Pinzon