Glen Education Brady Road 

Transition strategies

By Vernessa, Early Childhood Educator

As educators we encourage children’s learning through different learning experiences and conversations throughout the whole year.  We are constantly setting up learning experiences to encourage and interest children through play based learning i.e. sorting and counting games, bingo, number and alphabet recognition, name recognition, stamping their names, signing their name writing sheets/boards, matching & identifying games, flash cards with children’s name and photo cards to help at transition times, encouraging children to identify their names/photo when we have group transition times i.e.: playball, and other incursions, lunch & snack times, identifying their belongings, learning how to open their lunch and snack containers independently.

We also have set up our home corner space replicated into a school classroom scenario, where many of the children are encouraged to play and familiarise themselves with the school setting, a space for learning and having a good understanding of school readiness.

This area is equipped with tables /chairs where the children can sit down and freely draw, write, read books, dress up uniforms, and role play. This definitely puts children’s mind at ease as they familiarise themselves and don’t feel as overwhelmed on their school transition days, things we often overlook and don’t realise children’s needs, which can bring on their anxiety & fears.  Incorporating emotion books and stories to enhance the common fears surrounding children’s school transition can help.

We have been lucky enough to have visits from our local school, St. Peter’s Primary.  The teacher and a small group of children have kindly come to our kindergarten to read and do activities with the children.  This has been terrific as it allows our children to feel confident in their own environment and get to know the older school children, fostering a lovely friendly partnership between school and kindergarten.

Glen Brady Rd Kindergarten reciprocated by taking our children over to visit the Primary School, which allows our children to get out and about in the community familiarising themselves with our surrounding environment.   Getting out for a walk is always a wonderful natural learning experience at any given time.

We have found the best ways to communicate with our families is to:

• Share information via the Glen Educations Kinderloop platform, Verbal communications with our families
• Continuously updating our Reflection Book based at our signing in bench, and accessible anytime for families to read through
• Our children’s portfolios which are thoroughly enjoyed by the children, they love to read their own portfolio recapturing their progression and reflet on their learning.