4 year old hyperactive after school

[Rain1]

I have a 4 year old DD who has just started school and goes completely hyperactive at about 4 o'clock. Spinning around, screaming, running, dancing, shouting and singing. It is intense and almost frantic. I'm finding it really difficult to cope with at the end of the day when I'm trying to settle my newborn and am exhausted myself.

Just wondering if anyone had been through similar and had found a particular routine or strategy to ease this?

What is he or she eating directly after school?

Have you asked their teacher if they're behaving like this during the school day or if they're in fact overly reserved?

What do you do after school? My son is always very excited at pick up (which makes a change as it was tears for the first half term), so we always go to the park on the way home.

Before anything, FEED HER. After school, I make sure my dc have a snack on the way home from school.
Then offer her a physical activity, preferably outside. It’s an obvious one but a good’un – the park is just down the road from my DC’s school and we’re there almost every other day. Even if it’s just a quick ten minute play, running off that unvented steam seems to help stop my four year old totally losing her mind as soon as she walks through the door when we eventually get home. If ten minutes in the rain at the park means a more peaceful bedtime with less shouting and no tantrums then I can deal with that.
We’ve recently created a new Friday tradition that involves a trip to the village shop for chocolate straight after school, uniform off and pyjamas on as soon as we’re home, and a movie on Netflix with a mug of warm milk.
No matter, be patient and model calmness. I have to remind myself repeatedly that I can only control my reaction.

My DD is just turning 6 but she does this. Yes - frantic is a good word for it. It's not a happy hyperactive. For some reason she gets really hyper when she's tired. Could it be tiredness? Has your DD ever shown any signs of any additional needs? My DD has SN but that is probably just a coincidence. I'm sure many many children will be like this after school!

We are usually the last out of the playground after school. We tend to hang back and walk run home sometimes stopping at the park to give her some time to get it out of her system a bit. Then when we get home I try to encourage her to rest for a bit because it's over tiredness that seems to cause it. It's hard to get her to keep still at the best of times so I'm afraid we use a screen for half an hour but it does seem to recharge her and she will be a bit calmer after half an hour or so. If she's particularly bad DD will use a weighted blanket while she watches something on her tablet.

I think this is quite common. They are very young and have had to conform and be on their best behaviour all day. We had woods on the way home that the dc could run about in but failing something similar I would take a snack to the park I think.

I've been coming straight home with her thinking that she would need to rest a bit. I do think it is tiredness. She has always been a child that wound up rather than down when tired.

When at home we wouldn't normally have snacks but she has been having a piece of fruit or cereal bar sometimes. I've been trying to get dinner on the table earlier in the hope that I might get her to bed earlier but no such luck.

I will try bringing something to eat at pick up and some running around before coming home.

I'll ask the teacher what she's like in class. No SN that I am aware of.

And make sure she's drinking enough at school too. Is her bottle empty? In DD's school they kept water bottles on a tray and when the child took a drink, they got a waterdrop sitcker to put on it so there was a way of keeping track....some children just don't drink otherwise and teachers are too busy to check.