Teaching 4 yo conceit if time- tips?

[dinosino]

Our just turning 4yo is getting a bit panicky about starting school. In particular he wakes up and asks if school starts today most days. Obviously we have explained everything about when it is, what will happen etc, and used visual aids like a calendar, and I drew out a weekly plan to try to teach him the concept of weeks.

However it's not helping. Does anyone have any good useful devices or tips to helping preschoolers understand time? We are getting him an analogue watch for his birthday and I always talk about days of the week, seasons etc etc but just wondering if there is anything wise we can do to help him along. He is interested and uses fingers to ask how long something will take, but the "units" of counting he is using are fingers, and he doesn't understand minutes, hours, days, weeks or months yet - completely normal I presume (first child).

The lack of control he's feeling (fear of this big unknown school thing starting any day now) is giving him nightmares and causing him to act out a bit.

I think days of the week etc are a bit too abstract. Assuming he's starting in September, that's still ages away for a 4 year old.
Can you give him some big events that starting school will be later than? Big holiday and or visiting nanna or something, then you can talk about the number of sleeps before he starts.

I wonder if there is something you could do to address the anxiety rather than focusing on how much time there is left. What has him so worried?

Could you get in touch with the school that he'll be going to and see if they have any suggestions for managing his worry? They'll have come across this before and might have some good ideas to work on alongside understanding about time.