The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things – Plato

Entering formal schooling in Grade R is an important step in building on your child’s current
knowledge and development in order to prepare them for the rest of their school career. School
readiness and a readiness to learn are not seen as a set of formal demands that can be met any
more. By taking the child’s development and potential into account, the emphasis shifts to the
ongoing process of facilitating development by providing the child with developmentally
appropriate activities and learning opportunities. Parents are responsible for providing these
opportunities and for this reason we will look at factors that can influence a child’s readiness to
learn, skills that are deemed necessary for learning to take place and ideas of how these skills can
be developed or facilitated.

As a parent you can improve your child’s readiness to learn by providing an experience rich
environment, which provides stimulation and multiple opportunities to learn. The home
environment does not need to be a wealthy environment and children coming from a rural area
can also experience this stimulation, as long as there are adults that help them learn by talking to
them, telling them about the things they see, and making them experience things in real life. This
will also motivate the child to learn as they would want to please their parents at this age. When
they get older this motivation must shift to an internal motivation where they want to learn or
achieve in order to please themselves. Another important factor is your child’s health since
learning takes energy. A balanced diet, controlled weight and enough exercise could contribute to
a healthy child with a lot of energy to explore and learn.

Your child should be developed as a whole person, taking into account the emotional, intellectual,
social and physical aspects. Physically your child has grown a lot since birth and should be able
to master certain big movements (gross motor skills) and small movements (fine motor skills).
They are important as to ensure that your child doesn’t tire easily because of low muscle tone,
have poor pencil control, and seem clumsy or unsure of their bodies in space. Individual
differences might occur between children regarding their level of competence in each skill. The
most important skills are listed in the table below.

Materials that can improve gross and fine motor skills include tricycles, climbing structures like
trees and jungle gyms, balls, swings, music, puzzles, lego’s, art materials like crayons, paint, glue,
scissors et cetera, clay, musical instruments, dress-up clothes, dolls, books, sand/water toys and
most importantly a caring adult’s TIME AND INVOLVEMENT.

Another important physical aspect of your child’s development includes their perception skills,
which refers to their senses and how they can receive and interpret messages through their
senses. Your child need to be able to notice differences in what they see or hear; be able to focus
on one thing and put other information to the back of your mind; be able to complete missing
information; recognize an order in what they see or hear; and have a good short-term memory.
This can be easily practised in your everyday life by making your child aware of different colours,
sounds, textures, smells and tastes. Cooking or gardening together is an example of fun learning
experiences combined with something that you have to do in any case.

Playing board or outside games like hide-and-seek is in turn crucial for social development,
which refers to the extent to which a child can behave in a socially appropriate way and follow the
rules of society. In this example learning how to take turns. Typical social skills that your child
should master around a school going age are to enjoy group play and competitive games; like
adult companionship; choose his/her own friends and be sociable with them; be aware of rules;
insist on fair play; accept and respect authority; ask permission; enjoy jokes; have a sense of selfidentity;
be sensitive to ridicule; accept the uniqueness of others and to usually prefer friends of
the same gender.

An aspect that is sometimes deemed even more important than physical, social or cognitive
development are emotional maturity, which could help your child to cope with new and
challenging situations, such as entering a formal learning environment. To be considered school
ready emotionally, the child should have a positive self-image and self confidence and should be
able to have control of his/her emotions to a certain extent in order to be able to express them in a
socially acceptable way. Emotional development thus occurs when the child comes to have
knowledge, understanding and a positive acceptance of the self. This is important for your child to
be able to fit in with other children and make friends. By providing a lot of praise you can build your
child’s self-image and assist them in developing a pride of their work. This will also assure them
that you are proud of them for trying and risking and that their effort rather than their academic
performance are important.

That opens up the discussion on your child’s intellectual development, which includes
knowledge and thinking. The knowledge refers to everything a child knows about a certain topic,
whether it is facts, concepts, the child’s understanding or the strategies he/she uses to use this
information. The child should thus be given information and asked questions to make them think
about it, in order to stimulate this development. Memory is also important, since the child should
be able to retain what is being learnt. When the child’s intellectual development is at the school
going age appropriate level, the child will be able to pay attention; remember; interpret; classify;
evaluate ideas; infer principles and deduce rules; imagine possibilities; generate strategies and
solve problems. Even if the proper stimulation is provided and the above cognitive skills are in
place, your child should be motivated to want to go to primary school to learn to read or write or do
sums. The first learning experiences at home have a big influence on the attitudes of children
towards school. Your child’s motivation can have a significant influence on his or her learning
success.

Back to praise. Since your child’s motivation is also formed by the feedback they receive when
they do something, we look at different ways of praising your child. You can give generic praise
including the whole person, for example, “You are a good boy/girl” or process praise, for example,
“You found a good way to do it” or “I can see that you worked hard on the different colours”. By
rather providing process praise, the child won’t think in trait terms and interpret mistakes as
negative traits, which could undermine motivation. Both types of praise can be rewarding, but
process praise can have more positive effects. Talking to your child and discussing the effort
they’ve put into a project also contributes to their language development, an important aspect of
readiness to learn, since the child should be able to understand what is expected of him/her and to
ask questions if he/she doesn’t understand something. For this purpose the child should have a
broad vocabulary and clear, understandable speech. The language ability of the child affects their
ability to read, write, and spell and to solve problems in mathematics.

Your child’s vocabulary should be broad enough to be able to tell someone about something that
happened or that he/she heard of. In order to stimulate this, the parents can ask the child
questions about his/her day at school, or about the program he/she watched, or about something
they did together the previous day or week. Conversation is always an opportunity to learn!
By providing learning experiences and joining in them, such as your conversations, could give
your child the head start that you want them to have. Parents can help their children prepare for
school by:
• Running an orderly household;
• Encouraging the children to ask questions;
• Giving them love and affection;
• Telling them stories and reading to them;
• Encouraging them to use their imaginations when they play;
• Limiting the time spent watching television or playing television games;
• Making sure they sleep enough and eat healthy.

Always remember, however, that there are individual differences between children and that this is
merely a guideline. Should you have serious concerns about your child’s readiness to learn, it is a
good idea to implement the suggestions on how to provide learning experiences and/or to see a
professional who can assist you in doing a proper assessment and intervention programme.

Resources
Cimpian, A., Arce, H.C., Markman, E.M. & Dweek, C.S. (2007) Subtle Linguistic Cues Affect
Children’s Motivation. Association for Psychological Science, 18 (4), p. 314-316.
Davin, R. & Van Staden, C. (2005) The Reception Year, Learning Through Play (2nd Edition).
South Africa, Sandton: Heinemann Publishers.
Dickens, W.T. (2005) Genetic Differences and School Readiness. The Future of Children, Critical
Issues For Children and Youths, 15 (1), p. 55.
Fauconnier, J. (2005) Developing Indicators Of Emotional School Readiness Of South African
Children And Possible Therapeutic Use Thereof. Unpublished Masters Thesis, University of
Pretoria. South Africa: Pretoria.
Piotrkowski, C.S., Botsko, M. & Matthews, E. (2000) Parents’ and Teachers’ Beliefs About
Children’s School Readiness in a High-Need Community. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15
(4), p.537-558.
Wesley, P.W. & Buysse, V. (2003) Making meaning of school readiness in schools and
communities. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 18, p. 351-375.
Winkler, G., Modise, M. & Dawber, A. (2004) All Children Can Learn. A Handbook on Teaching
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