With enrolments available in our Early Learning Programs for Term 4 and beyond, we look at the top five ways that a Meerilinga education prepares your child for school and beyond.
5. Taking Risks in Outdoor Play
Climbing over a log, crawling through a tunnel or balancing on a beam looks like pure fun, but through outdoor play our children are developing coordination, spatial awareness and core strength. We plan for purposeful and challenging outdoor activities because these physical skills translate directly to the classroom, where a strong core helps children sit upright for longer periods, and good coordination supports fine motor control for writing and cutting.
Under the supervision of our Educators, our children are enabled to take risks in a safe environment and learn how to make mistakes and how to keep both themselves and other children safe as they play.
4. Reading Together
Reading storybooks is one of the most powerful ways Meerilinga helps to prepare children for school. Australian research shows that children who are read to often are up to a year ahead in literacy skills by the time they start school, with stronger vocabularies, better comprehension and even higher NAPLAN results later on (see the research here).
When we share storybooks, children are learning how stories flow while building print awareness and soaking up rich language that fuels their imagination. This is helped by how our Educators read, with expressive actions or by using different techniques to engage the children, like providing objects to shake for sound or reading alongside our very own Story Dog.
3. Following Morning Jobs
Our Early Learning Programs have a daily plan for your child that helps build their independence while they discover how to follow a routine. This is why our children arrive at Meerilinga each morning with important jobs to do, including unpacking their bag, popping their lunchbox and drink bottle in the right spot, finding their name tag, and hanging their flannels before they head off to play.
It might look simple, but these small daily rituals are building big skills such as independence, organisation and responsibility. Repeating the same sequence each day also boosts working memory and the ability to follow multi-step instructions, which are the very skills they’ll need to thrive in the structured routine of school.
2. Playing with Purpose
How can you play with purpose? Ask one of our Educators this and they’ll explain how their weekly play-based curriculum utilises building blocks, sorting activities, drawing and counting games to help children explore patterns, shapes, letters and numbers. In these activities, children encounter the concepts of literacy and numeracy in fun and meaningful contexts and start recognising and understanding them well before formal lessons begin at school.
Playing with objects such as playdough also enables children to strengthen the small muscles in their hands and fingers and build the fine motor skills needed for holding a pencil with control. At Meerilinga, we often pair playdough with natural materials like leaves or shells, or provide tools like rolling pins and cutters, so children can experiment with different textures and movements while expanding their creativity.
1. Social and Emotional Growth
The strong development of your child’s social skills and their ability to act independently have consistently been the reasons that families choose our programs. This is the opinion of our Professional Support Coordinator Alisa, and Educational Leader Jade agrees: “To be honest, the biggest school-readiness benefit our programs offer is the social emotional growth children gain from engaging in our curriculum alongside other children.”
Everything that we do in our Early Learning Programs helps contribute to this social and emotional growth, whether it’s through the managing of personal lunches or allowing our children the space and time to attempt to solve small problems before seeking adult assistance.
Your child’s social life will also flourish, and they’ll spend time exploring their community through excursions to local libraries and schools, learn how to listen when others are speaking with our yarning circles, join in groups games and activities while respecting personal space, and learn how to use words to solve problems and disagreements.
It was difficult to get this list down to just five since everything that we teach in our curriculum is helping to prepare your child for school! Make sure to ask our Educators and Curriculum Leaders for their favourite ways we’re developing school readiness.
Contact us or head into your local Centre to discover all that your child will learn, play and do while at Meerilinga.
