Pre-School Support Programme

Preparing for School

Here are some skills you can work on at home to prepare your child for starting school.

Developing independence: Teach them to carry their own school bag, hang it up,and put their book bag in their bag
Taking responsibility for their own gear: Putting away clothing, shoes, hats, stationery, and their lunch box away in their bag
Recognising their name; writing their name is helpful
Pencil grip
Basic counting
Handling Scissors
Listening to and telling stories
Vocalising their needs e.g.. ‘I have a sore toe’
Toileting themselves, changing clothes
Playing games and taking turns
Following instructions
Recognising some letters with the phonetic sounds - start with the vowels (see the Jolly Phonics link below)
Being left with other children and people for increasing lengths of time
Reading books daily to your child – research tells us that it is important for children to have been read at least 1000 books before they start school. This works out to be only one book a day, Monday to Friday .

Open day

We will advertise when our next open day is scheduled. In the mean time you are welcome to arrange a visit by appointment. Please call the school office on 07 888 5444

The first part of our open days are especially suited to parents with children ready to start school in the next 12 months. Parents can bring these children along to experience our Junior class between 9:15—11AM.

This is followed at 11AM by morning tea for parents, where our new entrant teacher will do a special 20 minute talk with question and answer session for parents on how to prepare your child for school.

Learning to Read

When first starting to read your child will bring home phonetic letter sound to practise and write and sight words to learn. Weeks later they will start blending these and then start bringing home reading books. It is very important you make time each day to work on this with your child as at this age they can forget just hours later.

Your child will bring home a new reading book every second night. At times they will have banks of sight words or numbers to learn. Please read these with your child and or play games with these.
The important thing is to make any homework a positive experience. 15 minutes is all it should take as they become more fluent in reading.

Use a Pause, Prompt, Praise approach. If your child makes a mistake wait 5 seconds (pause) to see if they can fix their mistake, if they are unable to correct their mistake prompt them by saying things like "does that make sense to you?" or "is there something in the picture that can help you work out that work?". Lastly praise, praise, praise! You do not need to pick up every error. At this level your child needs lots of encouragement.

If you have any questions, ask your child's teacher.

Drop into the school office and pick up your free Ready Set Go pack.

Know what your child needs to know to be ready for school? The Ready Set Go pack contains lots of helpful tips and tricks along with goals and games to help prepare your child for school.

Pre-School Transition Programme

In the school month before starting school for the first time preschoolers are invited along to three or four visits as part of their preparation and transition for school . These take place on Wednesday mornings from 8:50 a.m until 11:00 a.m in the 4 weeks prior to your child's 5th birthday. This will help your child understand how school works, build an understanding of expectations and start to develop friendships.

Parents need to stay with their child on these visits and they are welcome to stay in class with them but must at least be on the school grounds during their child's visit. We know this can be a stressful and anxious time for some children and parents, therefore we have built in flexibility around this process. Our aim is to make the transition as smooth and as comfortable as possible.

To arrange a visit or a Pre-School Pack please contact us at office@matamata.school.nz

Classroom Routines

Each day we cover: Reading, Phonics, Writing, Mathematics, Devotions and Oral language and twice weekly we do Physical Education and study our topic (Science, Social Studies or Technology)

We focus on Literacy and Numeracy in the mornings.

Through these we develop five key competencies: thinking, using language, symbols, and texts, managing self, relating to others, participating and contributing.

Our routines in the classroom do not change a lot as structure is an essential part of helping New Entrant's transition to school.