Starting reception in September what to expect

[New2schoolrun]

Hi! My child is starting reception in September I just wondered if anyone had any advice on how to make the morning rush of getting ready go smoothly? Anything you’ve learnt along the way? Also what I can expect of the first week of reception for my child? And myself really. It’s the first time I’ve ever done this and I’m nervous but want to be best prepared. I have two girls aged 4&2 so will need to get one ready for school and one ready for the school run and to then come home. We will be walking and the youngest in the pram I expect.
thank you in advance for reading this and getting back to me :)

• specifically for the first week - let them have down time when they get home, even if they've been in nursery it can often be overwhelming and tiring to be in full time school so when DD was little the first week I planned nothing for after school, even running errands etc, so she had time to adjust and then I started introducing after school activities/playdates etc further on in the term.

• I also prepared DD the week or so before she started by getting back into a proper bedtime/wake up routine (that had gone to pot over the holidays) the bed/wake up times a 😘little bit every night so that by the time she was going back to school she was definitely getting enough sleep at the right time, rather than letting her stay up till 9/10 and then having to wake her early

*If you're sending them with a packed lunch have them practice everything, from opening their lunch bag the right way (I've watched kids stand their lunch bag up, unzip it and have everything fall out as opposed to lying it down on the table and opening it up🎁💔💔), to opening any item inside - whether it's a crisp bag or pot of hummus with a screw top <1;ing the little cooling blocks to keep everything chilled I would freeze a bottle of water/juice and pop that in her lunchbox, it kept her food cool till lunch but also gave her an extra drink at lunch time as it was usually melted by then.

• label and personalise everything ... If it's going within 20 miles of the school it needs to be labelled with their name, and the more places you label things the better; if it's something like a book bag where they're all identical, get a distinctive keyring/iron on patch/something you can clip onto it etc to make it obvious it's theirs easily

• get as much prepared the night before as possible - set out everything they're going to wear from underwear to hair ties, but put it wherever is most logical for you ... Eg when DD started primary we lived on a flat so I put her clothes out on the chair in her room as everything was on the same level and it was easy to stick my head round the door to check on her; when we first moved back to the UK we lived in a house where the bathroom was downstairs so I would set her clothes out on the sofa and she'd change in the living room after breakfast as I found that she would faff about as it wasn't as easy for me to pop my head round the door if she was taking too long.

• We kept her hair stuff in a box on the dining room table because I would do her hair while she ate breakfast and it was so much easier to always have it there than have to keep getting things from elsewhere.

• set up a place for DC to keep their school stuff and get into a simple routine when they come home so they are more likely to build it into a habit. Eg in our house when DD was in primary she would come in, hang up her coat, take off her shoes, put her book bag on the dining room table, get changed while I checked her book bag for letters etc then she'd come down and have a snack, do any reading/homework then her book bag would go in the kallax unit in our hall ready for the morning before we had dinner ... Now DD is in secondary it is second nature for her to come home, take her bag to her desk, get changed and make a snack, do her homework then put her bag in the kallax ready for the following morning.

• Have visual checklists for the morning; at primary level I had a really simple "morning checklist" on a whiteboard for DD with simple pictures - get up, make bed, get washed, have breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth, TV time, shoes on and leave - it not only kept DD on track but again got her into that regular routine to the point it becomes second nature.

My DD started Reception last September. A few grains of advice, based on my experience:

School uniform - I completely overbought everything. In reality, she barely wore the dresses which were a bugger to iron and which were too summery to wear after the first half term. Buy the minimum you need to start with then stock up on more when you see what washes well/doesn't shrink in the tumble drier.

Groundhog Day - If you're doing pick-ups and drop-offs, don't underestimate the monotony - there and back 4 trips per day, 28 trips per week, 1120 trips over 40 weeks per school year, 7840 trips over 7 years in primary school. Then there's the 'hello's' to all the people you bump into on enroute and at the school gate - everyone's in a rush so there's no time to connect beyond that, just 'hello, hello, hello' ad infinitum.

Birthday Parties - Prepare yourself for an influx of 5th birthday invitations and how these parties will eat into your weekends. Buy your DD at least one superhero costume because a good 80% of said parties will be superhero-themed.
Before long, you'll be familiar with every Spiderman entertainer in your town and how good they are at doing backflips. Also, budget for all those 5th birthday party gifts. The kids' book section at TK Maxx is your friend.

Behaviour - My DD Matilda is known to our friends as 'Machillda" because of her chilled nature. Wow, did she defy this during her first term at school - hysterical tantrums due to the early starts and intensive days - kicking, biting, scratching, screaming... I lost count of the number of times I resorted to carrying her over my shoulder all the way to school as she kicked her shoes off in protest.

Matilda was born profoundly deaf and was entirely without access to sound until she got cochlear implants at almost 3 years old (cheers, lockdown). Therefore she started school with a significant speech & language delay - undoubtedly this contributed to her challenging behaviour as she had a vast amount of catching up to do which was overwhelming, daunting, and exhausting for her.

I'm relieved to say that after her first term, she settled in and has made astounding progress. In part due to her resilience, but also because we hit the jackpot with our catchment school - the teaching staff and SEN support are incredible, tailoring her education to meet her every need and checking in with me every step of the way. It's only after talking to friends about their experience of their DC starting school that I realise this isn't always the norm - therefore my advice is: don't hesitate to speak up if you sense something isn't right.

By the end of your DD's first full week at school, she'll be more tired than you ever thought possible. Keep weekends low key for a while.

Keep a hairbrush, a jar of £1 coins, a sharpie and some name stickers handy.

Don't have whole class parties unless you really want to.

My DC's, and other local primary schools, a s always dressing up. There seems to be a themed day at lest every term. A parent of an older chins advised me to stockpile these types of garments if I saw them in charity shops- flat cap, collarless shirt, hand knitted or old fashioned looking jumpers, short trousers, plain coloured t shirts and leggings and waistcoats, and old sheets. This dressing up collection has come to the rescue many times to form the basis of costumes for being a frog, a child in WW2, the white rabbit from
Alice in Wonderland, a Victorian child, Hermes....

Good luck!

Just wanted to say this is so useful, thank you all!

If your school still sends paper copies of letters(many are now all electronic communication) set up a folder called school on your phone and photograph letters that come in particularly if they mention random future activities and dates! Every so often you can have a purge and delete the ones that are now irrelevant but it's much easier than trying to keep hold of bits of paper.

If there's a class WhatsApp group it can be useful to join but be wary as some turn into school related moaning - be aware school will know what is being said as someone IME will always show the Head if anything too controversial is on there!

If your school still sends paper copies of letters(many are now all electronic communication) set up a folder called school on your phone and photograph letters that come in particularly if they mention random future activities and dates! Every so often you can have a purge and delete the ones that are now irrelevant but it's much easier than trying to keep hold of bits of paper.

Definitely - and even if stuff is on an app (of which there are about 700 different ones they send information through) then I screenshot the info so I have it to hand rather than having to remember which app it's in.

ExDH and I co-parent DD 50/50 and she is with each of us every other week so if she received a letter when she was with me for an event on her dad's week I needed to let him know and we were constantly missing stuff at first until we set up a specific WhatsApp group chat (set up a group named "DDs activities" and then added myself and ExDH so it is separate to our normal WhatsApp messages) for DDs info. We don't need it much now she's a teen and more or less manages her own schedule, and we only set it up because of the logistics of 50/50 custody but my siblings and their partners have all adopted the system for their kids too (one has gone so far to have a specific chat for each child) as it means all the info is in one place and can be kept as a separate thread so you don't have to scroll back through anything else.

Whenever a letter/invite/notification came home - whether it was a letter in her book bag, an email or a message on one of the apps - whichever parent received it would take a picture/screenshot and put it in the WhatsApp group with a brief description of what/when the event was eg Non uniform day 14/9/23 £1; Trip to Zoo, 23/10/23 £10; Millie's bday party 2/11/23 3pm, soft play centre etc

That way we could see at a glance the date but then if we had a follow up question we could quote the message and reply directly so we knew what we were discussing eg "Trip to Zoo 23/10/23 £10 ... have you paid £10? ... No, will pay it this week/No, can you pay it from DDs activity account/Yes have paid it already etc

Put all important dates in your calendar right away (I have a shared calendar with my husband).

This is amazing!

Spare clothes in PE bag just in case.
Label everything.
Being able to manage zips on coats is a big help.
Show her how to ask to play and to say no thanks I'm not done when someone asks for a toy. Those are the biggest two upsets in EYFS - no one played with them (because they didn't ask) and someone took their toy but they didn't want them to.
Tell your child if they have anything to hand in, show them it is in their bag and remind them. They are expected to be independent.
Go back to the 80s with gloves attached or they will not last a day! ha!
When it is forest school please, please please pack layers - most of ours cry because they think 1 layer is fine in -5 temperatures because it is fine when walking to the car and back (and we put spare clothes on them too).

1. Don't faff with name labels. A sharpie is the way forward.
2. If having packed lunch don't be fooled by all the cooler bags. I now, after 4 kids, use just a plastic box styled one. The cooler types are ridiculous to clean and the liners get yucky.

3.have a school shoe box if kore than one child. We put pe trainers and school shoes in one box to keep them together .

1. Leave 10 minutes earlier than normal
2. Sort out uniform the night before.

6.Give your child a colour on your phone calendar and any pe days, events and assemblies on there with an alarm for the night before and again for 8am is.

1. If given any forms to fill in take a photo of it so.you can Re print it if it gets lost.
2. Fill said form in as soon as you get home.
3. Join the class whatsapp group for remembering assemblies and pe days as the calendar is only good if you update it!

10. Try to make one or 2.mum friends so you can help each other out on school runs if you or another child is ill. 11.yogurt in lunch box? Tell child to put the carton or squeeze tube inside the sandwich bag when done or crisp packet. 12. Buggy bord if you have a long walk 13. Smile and engage with polite conversation with the teacher. Makes things easier if you need to speak to them about something important. 14. Don't join the pta unless you really have enough time. 15. Change a £20 note for £1 coins (or £10) and keep in a jar in the kitchen for mufty days.

Also if you screenshot any school info on emails and apps. Press the heart so it goes to your favourites folder so it's easy to find

Honestly every single contribution to this thread has been absolutely amazing! So happy I made this, it’s helped me so much and others too by the sounds of it! Thank you! It really is a minefield for new starters 😂

How's the first week gone?

@surreygirl1987 thanks for asking 😊 mornings have been fine getting us up and sorted we’ve been ready early all been good! Dread to think how hard it’ll be come winter! She’s done really well. How’s everyone else’s been? X x

Oh brilliant! Fine here too so far, but I agree winter will be tough!