Back to school vibes!

Back to school vibes!

Back to school vibes!

It’s that time of year again when nervous parents and excited school starters get ready to start their first day. With just a a week to go you might be asking yourself what you can do to help your child?
You might want to start by reading the new book by parenting expert, Sarah Ockwell-Smith called
"The Starting School Book How to Choose, Prepare for and Settle Your Child at School” with lots of great advice including the following tips:
Practicing getting their uniform on and off
Being toliet savvy
Practice school runs
Being unique as possible (bags, water bottles etc)
Plus many more great ideas and a more in depth look into making this milestone transition as smooth as possible.
Another thing to remember is that emphasis is on education through play in reception year. So although it is good if your child is familiar with their numbers and alphabet, it is perhaps more helpful to for the teachers that your child can hold a pencil, use a glue stick, cut with scissors. These can be great things to practice with your child over the coming days. We have a wonderful activity
involving cutting and sticking on our Tender Leaf UK website. You can print it out for free here:
In addition to the prep, why not pop a few educational focussed toys infront of them, something fun to fill their time with but at the same time starting to focus and retrain their spongey little minds after their time off... We have a few really gorgeous toys that involve introductions to counting, fractions and letters.. They are really bright and colourful so are incredibly attractive to little ones, for example our how many acorns or alphabet pictures.... And for children who are a little older, the citrus fractions is a really popular toy for us and loved by kids alike! 
We’ve also rounded up some more great books and products relating to starting school here below…
What ever you do to prepare your child, it will still be an emotional roller coaster, especially on that first drop off! Maybe the best thing to remember for the parents is some tissues! Good luck everyone!