How to help your children prepare for their first day at nursery

Summer is just around the corner and that means that lots of children will be getting ready to start going to nursery in September. Of course, children so start at other times of the year too, such as after Christmas or after Easter. If your child is due to start nursery soon you might be wondering what you can do to help prepare them for their first day. Here are some ideas:

Practise the journey

For a lot of children going somewhere new can be quite daunting, especially if it means they’re going to be left there for a while without parents.  So, how attached is your child to you? Do they have separation anxiety? It’s really important to try and fix this before they go to a nursery. For example,  going out and having a babysitter once a week is a great way to get them to work on their separation anxiety. But you can even look into care.com reviews in case you’re stressed about finding a good babysitter (as loved ones might not always have time).

One way to help prepare your child for their first day is to make the journey a few times, so they can get used to the setting in advance. This is especially helpful if you will be walking to and from nursery.

Have a look around

Most families will have gone to look around the nursery their child is going to attend before they make a decision about it. However, another way to help prepare the child for their first day is to keep going back and showing them where the door is etc. This way they might not get so worried about going into a building that they haven’t seen before.

Look at what a day might look like

If your child has been used to being at home with you, or someone else, up until now then they might not be prepared for being in a setting with more of a routine. Ahead of the first day you could try to stick to the nursery’s routine for things like snacks and lunch to help prepare your child. They will find these timings easier once they are finally at nursery.

Read books

There are loads of great books out there that will tackle the idea of the first day at school or nursery and these are a great place to start. Reading books with your child can not only help prepare them for going to nursery for the first time but stories can show them things like having new friends and some of the fun activities that they might be doing.

Hopefully a couple of these suggestions help and your child has the best first day at nursery!