Waiting to find out which Primary School your child has a place at? Don’t stress it. Use this time to get your child ready to start.

My kids are both at school full-time now, as the Empty Nest Mummy blog name suggests. (Well, Empty Nest Mummy Mon-Fri from 9.00 to 3.30, but that was too long for a blog name!) But I have quite a few friends who are waiting, with baited breath and fingers crossed, to find our which Primary School their child will start at. Around here, all will be revealed just after Easter. Less than 3 weeks and they’ll know which school their kid will be going to.

All the visits around local schools are over. Choosing favourite schools and putting them in order of preference is done. And soon the waiting will be over too. All done.

Or is it?

Actually, no.

Now you need to make sure that your child is actually ready to start Primary School. You now have 5 months to work on giving them the best possible start to school. Whichever school they get into.

Independent Dressing

Big Boy started to dress himself when he went to nursery, the year before Primary School. So I thought I was all sorted. He dresses independently, right? Box ticked? Ready?

Then I realised that he’d have to put a shirt on for school and navigate those tiny little fiddly shirt buttons. Cue last-minute rush to teach him both buttons and patience. It was a fraught few weeks!

…now, let me tell you, I didn’t make that same mistake with his younger sister. She was taught how to do up buttons much earlier. So she started Primary School able to get dressed and undressed for PE without any help from the teachers. Which I’m sure they appreciated immensely. I can only imagine the utter carnage at PE time, getting thirty 4 year olds dressed and undressed.

Putting your hand up

As I didn’t go back to work after I had my second child, and my Big Boy was at Primary School already, my daughter was used to having my attention. My undivided attention.

And she’s a desperately chatty little thing. (Like her gob-on-a-stick mother)

So she was used to talking to me and at me all day long. Endless questions, comments, salient points of view.

And I was perfectly happy for her to jabber at me incessantly all the time.

….but a Big School teacher, with 29 other kids to deal with too, is not going to feel the same.

So you need to get your child ready for Carpet Time.

Teach them to sit quietly and listen. Teach them to put their hand up when they have a question.

..and to wait until they are chosen to ask it. Don’t forget that bit. (I did. And Littlest Angel was not happy that she was told not to call out).

Toilet trained including bottom wiping

** To those of a sensitive disposition: Please put any food to one side before you read this **

Both my kids eat a lot of fruit. And a lot of vegetables. And, as you might imagine, they need to poo a lot. Saving it for after school doesn’t cut the mustard for these pint-sized pooing machines.

So they will need to poo at school. And they will need to wipe their own bottom.

And the teachers will not do it for them.

If you haven’t taught them this already, give it a try today. It’s actually much tricker than you think. I’m not sure if it’s something to do with the length of their arms, but they might find it quite hard to reach the parts that they must reach.

….but reach them they must!

So, if you haven’t done it already, get contorting and twisting to show them how to get themselves into the right position.

Hygiene and hand washing

….leading us neatly onto hygiene.

Schools are petri-dishes filled with skanky nasty old germs. You and your family’s health will take a massive nosedive once you have kids at Primary School.

Why?

Perhaps it’s because they are still building up their immune system, so they catch everything.

Or perhaps it’s because they play so close together, face to face, dirty sticky little hand holding dirty sticky little hand.

Or perhaps because they don’t wash their hands properly.

So, give your kid a chance and teach them how to wash their hands properly. Front of hands, back of hands and interlace the fingers. With soap.

…. Don’t forget that your own health is at stake!

Labels for clothes

Make sure you get all their school clothes labelled up. All of it. Even the socks.

Imagine the utter chaos of 30 little kids fumbling around with buttons, getting ready for PE and leaving all their clothes on the floor.

That any of them ever get all the correct clothes back at the end has got to be one of the 7 Wonders of the Primary School World.

I have wasted at least 3 weeks of my life scratching and scraping through the Lost Property Box already. And the oldest one is only in Year 2.

So, avoid your kid coming home half naked. Label the uniform***. All of it.

(***this includes shoes, socks, hats, scarves and gloves)

Trust me, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and heartache. Get the needle and thread out.

Route to school

If you don’t normally go past their new school, make sure you do. Change your route to the shops so you can go past and point it out.

That way, your kid will start to feel familiar with the road, and the look and size of the school.

…but don’t do this at school drop-off or pick-up times. Especially if your Primary School is really big. The utter chaos might well terrify your little child!

Put school term dates in your phone/diary

When the school gives you the calendar, put it all in your phone or diary.

That way, you’ll be able to make arrangements for inset days and assemblies and open days.

And do it straight away.

You don’t want to be the parent who has to fess up to the teachers that you’ve lost the calendar already!

(…because you’ll soon find out that teachers are terrifying. Even to grown women.)

Make some new friends

Get to know a few other kids going to the same school and arrange a playdate or two. Starting school can be a nerve-wracking time. It will be so much easier for your child if they have another sticky little hand to hold onto.

This won’t stop all the weeping and wailing, if they’re going to weep and wail. They don’t all do it. But there’s a fairly good chance they will. Big School is going to feel just that. Big. Very BIG.

But give your child the best start to school. Do all you can to get them ready.

….And start practising your big smile as you wave them off. And try to do it without weeping. Keep that to outside the gate after you’ve dropped them off.

Like the little piggy, you can weep weep weep all the way home.

I know I did.