Somewhere around this time of year, a quiet panic starts moving through the childcare pick-up conversations. Someone's cousin's child can already write their whole name. Someone else has bought a workbook. Your four-year-old is holding a pencil like a shovel and shows no interest in changing that. If your child starts preschool at the beginning of February, you have roughly three months of this ahead of you. It is worth knowing that almost none of it matters.
What kindergarten teachers actually hope for
Ask a preschool teacher what they want from the children arriving in their room and they rarely mention letters. They will teach the letters, that is the job.
What they hope for is a child who can manage a day. Who can wait a moment, cope when something does not go their way, ask for help when they are stuck and come back after lunch still willing to try. Teach a settled, confident child to read and it takes weeks. Teach an overwhelmed child to read and it takes a great deal longer, because you have to settle them first.
That is what readiness means. Not knowledge, capability.
Being able to manage yourself
Self-regulation is the quiet engine underneath everything else at school. It is the ability to wait for a turn, to tolerate a no, to sit with frustration without falling apart, and to notice you are cross before you are already shouting.
Persistence sits alongside it. A child who abandons a puzzle the moment it resists will find the first weeks of school harder than a child who has learned that difficult things become easier if you stay with them a little longer.
Neither of these is taught in a lesson. They are built over hundreds of small moments where a child is given the chance to struggle briefly and then succeed, with someone nearby who does not step in too early.
Being able to say goodbye
A child who separates well is not a child who never cries. It is a child who has learned, from repetition, that goodbyes are survivable and that the person who left will come back.
Every drop-off your child has already managed has been practice for the school gate. That is genuinely one of the strongest arguments for a preschool program in the year before school. By February, the goodbye is old news.
Being able to join in and ask for help
Two social skills carry more weight in a preschool classroom than almost anything else: walking up to a group of children and finding a way in, and telling an adult you need something.
The second one surprises parents. In a room with many children, a child who cannot say I do not understand or I need the toilet will have a much harder day than a child who can. It is a small skill with a very large effect.
Being able to move through a day
School runs on transitions. Pack up, line up, move to a different room or area, sit down, out to the playground, back again. Children who are used to a rhythm, and used to being told the rhythm is about to change, handle this comfortably. Children who are not can find it exhausting.
This is one of the clearest benefits of a preschool program in Canberra. The day has a shape, and children learn to move through it without needing an adult to steer them each time.
Empowerment is the whole point
At Wonderschool, empowerment is one of the four values we care about most, alongside wonder, integrity and respect. In practice it is straightforward. We let children do the things they are capable of doing.
That means a child pours their own water and cleans up the spill. Puts on their own shoes, slowly, while an adult waits. Carries the heavy thing. Solves the argument themselves where they can. Every one of those moments tells a child something about who they are.
By the time a child walks through the school gate, we want them carrying a particular belief: that they are someone who can work things out. That belief will do more for them in their first year of school than any amount of early letter formation.
We offer three-year-old preschool for eligible children
Key to note here too, is that Wonderschool is a three-year-old preschool provider through a program with the ACT Government. Led by a degree-qualified early childhood teacher where possible, eligible children who are enrolled with Wonderschool will be able to access up to 300 hours a year of free preschool, delivered as part of their day. Learning is play-based and is designed to support children’s early language, social, physical and learning skills before they start school. See here for more information on this program, or ask your friendly Wonderschool team. You can also find out more about our preschool approach.
Between now and February
Three things worth doing, none of which involve a workbook:
- Let them do more for themselves, even when it is slower and messier than doing it yourself.
- Talk about school as ordinary rather than enormous. Big build-ups create big nerves.
- Practise the small independence tasks: opening the lunchbox, managing the drink bottle, going to the toilet unassisted.
Talk to us about the year ahead
Our preschool program runs across our Canberra early learning centres, and this is the time of year we spend a great deal of time talking with families about the transition to school. Book a tour, join our waitlist or have a conversation with your child's educators about how they are tracking.