Starting kindergarten is a major milestone in any child’s life. It’s a brand-new stage that comes with a lot of emotion for both parents and children. Reading picturebooks can help introduce your child to the idea of school and help make the transition to kindergarten easier. Here’s some to check out.
What If …? Answers to Calm First-Day Jitters by Sonali Fry
Starting kindergarten comes with so many questions. It’s an entirely new routine in a new place with new faces. Classrooms, lunchtime, books, friends, teachers – children have questions about all areas of school life.
What If …? Answers to Calm First-Day Jitters is a great teaching tool for you and your child. Familiar Sesame Street characters wonder what to do when they start school. What if they miss mama? What if they get hungry? The answers reassure the child that everything will be ok. The beginning of the book comes with a guide for parents to adapt to a new school routine. It includes tips like making a school supply list, planning what they will wear the first day and selecting a comfort item for the child to take if they feel scared.
Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes
Some children have more than just first day jitters. Some have a full-blown anxiety that makes school feel like an impossible hurdle. Wemberly Worried is an older title but is one of the best books dealing with childhood anxiety. It explains how worries grow and how to shrink them back down. This was a book that I read (over and over!) to my daughter before she started kindergarten. It helped that Wemberly was also experiencing the same fears and that she was not alone in her emotions.
Perhaps the scariest thing about starting school is all the new people. The thought of making friends can be intimidating. Let’s Play is a story about how to make friends. Sukie is the new kid at school. Everyone else already has their friend groups and Sukie feels left out. The book shows children that making friends is a journey that often has some bumps along the way. Not everyone wants to be friends with Sukie and that’s ok. She keeps trying until she meets friends that ‘click.’ Readers will learn that friendship is based on kindness and compassion.
Raj’s Rule (For the Bathroom at School) by Lana Button
Sometimes, it’s not school itself that’s scary; rather, it’s the embarrassment of having to ask to go to the bathroom that makes children anxious.
Raj loves school. He loves the playground. He loves the lunchroom. But there is one place that makes him nervous – the bathroom. He dislikes it so much that he’s come up with a list of things to help avoid ever having to ‘go’ in the first place.
Raj’s Rule isn’t about starting school; it’s about avoiding scary places at school, like the bathroom. It’s a silly story that alleviates children’s fears about using the bathroom in a new and unfamiliar place.
Where Kids to Go to School Around the World by Helena Harastova
Other children may have no worries about starting kindergarten. Rather, they are excited to learn about life at school. Where Kids Go to School Around the World showcases what different schools look like across the globe. In some countries, students don’t start school until they are seven. And not everyone goes to school in a building. In Bangladesh, the rainy season can make schools inaccessible, so instead they go to school on a boat called a nauka. Children in the Himalayas walk 60 minutes down a mountain to get to school! Kids that are brimming with enthusiasm about kindergarten will like learning how children from different countries are connected by one thing – school.
Check it out 