When Kindergarten And School Work Hand In Hand – Creating A Safe And Encouraging Environment When Entering School

Entering school is certainly a crucial step for children and their parents. Children make a transition from a period of early learning through play to a period of formal learning. In this period, children's emotions are very intense and are either positive or negative. Therefore, adults should talk to their children in order to help them overcome their fears and help them form realistic expectations as the emotions felt by the children entering school will significantly affect their attitude towards school, learning and education. In the recent years, we have met numerous parents who doubt their child's preparedness for school and fear the upcoming schooling of their child. Hereby, it is to be emphasized that potential parents' intimidations concerning school will leave their child insecure when adapting to the new environment. If parents expose negative emotions concerning schooling, it is to be expected that the child will experience the same kind of negativity. Moreover, the growing cases of delayed schooling in the recent years confirm the parents' insecurity concerning formal schooling. When conversing on one hand with the parents who enrol their child to school and on the other with the parents who submit the applications for delayed schooling giving different reasons, we have found out that parents' fear towards schooling is substantially connected with lack of information about the pedagogical work undertaken in the first grades of primary school as many parents believe that schooling in the first years is too work orientated. The second reason for delayed schooling turns out to be parents’ overprotectiveness which is common in today's society. Due to the above mentioned, the enrolment in the first grade should not be of exclusively formal nature as it should be an opportunity to establish a good cooperation between school and parents whereas it can also be an opportunity for regaining parents’ trust and children’s sense of security. Appropriate communication with parents is of extreme importance since it enables a formation of realistic expectations concerning school and its program on the parents’ behalf. Kindergartens and schools are required to systematically connect in the period of transiting to school (as long as kindergarten does not get too school like) in order to guarantee optimal children’s development. In order to maintain effective cooperation, a transfer of certain information should be made possible but alas this is not always the case due to the General Date Protection Regulation. Kindergartens have considerable advantage in this area as they function as organizational units of primary schools. Information transfer is much easier as professional services are common to both. In my contribution, I will present actual activities, which are being implemented in our school prior to children’s enrolment to school in order to create a safe and encouraging learning environment for children entering a period of crucial importance for their further lives.