How do you prepare for the entrance in the first grade? There is no need to offer pre-writing exercises: better to promote outdoor games and small domestic tasks
Near the entry to primary school, parents begin to ask themselves, with a little concern, if their little ones are ready to learn to read and, above all, to write. So it happens that sometimes, eager to test and consolidate the “prerequisites” of childrenthey try their hand at “do-it-yourself” preparatory activities (for example by proposing to copy short words, or by downloading pregraphism cards from the internet or again, the most methodical, by purchasing texts that collect pre-writing activities). In most cases, however, the pedagogical and didactic aspects that characterize learning processes and which determine their success are unaware.
The risks of “domestic” preparation
Proposing activities in this way, therefore, can lead to the failure and at the same time to the development, in the child, of a dangerous intolerance towards this type of exercise. Why? Because if the child, carrying out the tasks proposed by mom and dad, experiences negative emotions, These emotions would risk re -emerging every time the same experiences are relived, even if the tasks were proposed correctly: the notions that are learnedin fact, sI fix in the brain together with the emotions experienced at that specific moment.
It is such a “powerful” and relevant phenomenon for the future success in school learning that it has become a specific fan of neuroscience, with the name of Warm Cognition.
The learning process
It is good to underline that if this run-up to a “domestic” preparation is a trend that in recent years the professionals of the educational services have been able to observe on several occasions, it is also true that it has been acute with the closure of the schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Wondering how to stimulate your children in the right way has therefore become a more current question than ever.
Let’s try to make some clarity, in order to avoid running into errors that could undermine the peaceful start of the school path.
First of all, we start by saying that in order for a child to relax the experience of primary school in a relaxed way it is necessary that he owns good emotional control. Studies conducted in the United States in the nineties, in fact, have highlighted how one of the major predictors of school success is precisely the possession of a good emotional regulation.
This is because the learning process is not a linear path that proceeds without hitches: it will often happen, indeed, that The child must compare himself with requests for various degrees of difficulty and with the error. In order to face you, the child must be prepared for the event that not everything goes as it would like and that it is normal, useful and is part of the learning process.
“Exercise” emotions
Here then that in view of the school it becomes important to help the child work on his emotional control, granting him the opportunity to confront emotions, without acting “from filter” by preventing him from experimenting with small failures and disappointments. The experiences of frustrationin fact, will allow the child not only to feel and learn to manage negative emotions of slight intensity, but also to devise, through the support present but not prevaricating of the adult, different solutions to cope with the problem to be solved.
They therefore welcome small tasks and activities that allow children to test themselves:
- set the table alone;
- Take a shower independently (the parent will remain in the room, but in the meantime he will deal, for example, of the washing machine);
- choose, start and complete a game;
- Playing together and giving the opportunity to experience both the victory and, above all, the defeat.
Starting from the management of frustrations within the safe space of the family will allow the child to generalize this emotional learning even to the most demanding contexts, such as the school one.
Train the body
And what about the prerequisite activities? What is good to propose to children so that they arrive in the class ready?
To avoid filling children of unnecessary, if not harmful activities, from the point of view of the subsequent school motivation, must always be remembered the fundamental principle that Learning passes first through the corporeal way.
It is therefore appropriate to avoid putting children in front of pre -printed cards; Better, however, privilege concrete experienceswhere body and movement are the real protagonists.
To learn to write well, for example, it is necessary to develop not only manual skills, but also good global motor coordination. Moving games are to be preferred, perhaps outdoorsto strengthen all the motor patterns (crawling, running, jumping, making goat …).
And again, instead of forcing the child to carry out pre-writing exercises, which moreover could be incorrect from an operational point of view, Better to help him adequately train the muscles of arms and hands: green light for activities in the kitchen, gardening, DIY and sewing!
