School Readiness
Starting school is a very exciting time for children. There are so many wonderful things to learn and new friends to make. There are so many great school readiness activities that you can do before your child starts school.
Many parents are keen to prepare their children for reading and writing. OneOnOne Children’s Therapy has made a booklet to develop your child’s school readiness. The NSW Foundation Font is used in the booklet.
This is a free resource for everyone. Please remember that all children develop differently. Your child does not need to do the things in this book before he or she starts school. It is perfectly ok to wait until school starts and be guided by your child’s teacher. However, if you are going to prepare your child for school, we want you to be able to do it the correct way.
Let’s go over some things to remember now:
Learning to Read
- Knowing that words have syllables or ‘beats’ is part of early reading. The word ‘dog’ has one beat, and the word ‘hospital’ has 3 beats.
- Being able to listen to a simple word and hear the individual sounds is a very important foundation skill for reading. Listening to the word ‘dog’ and knowing that it is made up of the sound ‘d’ at the beginning, the sound ‘o’ in the middle and the sound ‘g’ at the end are essential skills for reading.
- Learning the sound that a letter makes is more important for early readers than learning the letter names. Letter sounds are essential for early reading – letter names aren’t! Letter names are more important for spelling development.
Learning to Write
- Tracing lines allows a child to develop finger strength and pencil control for writing letters.
- Learning to position the paper and hold a pencil correctly should be established early.
- Many parents teach upper case letters because they are easier to learn, but it is more important for children to know how to write lower case letters when they first start school.
- Learning the correct starting point when you write a letter of the alphabet is important. For example, letters such as ‘l’ should be written from the top of the letter, not the bottom of the letter.
- Writing letters in the correct direction also matters. For example, letters such as ‘o’ are written anti-clockwise, not clockwise.
To help your child with school readiness we have made a fantastic booklet. To download your free copy of ‘I’m Going to School – Getting Ready to Read and Write’ click on this link Getting Ready for School.
Learn more about how children learn to read and write once they get to school here.
ENJOY THE BOOKLET!
OneOnOne Children’s Therapy is a Speech Pathology and Occupational Therapy clinic located in Bondi Junction in Sydney. If you want to know how we can help your child then call us on (02) 80657837 or email us.
