Preparing my child for school while hoping for a waiting list place

[Housequandary]

We unfortunately didn't get our first choice primary school (we were in the middle of moving within the county but didn't move in time and old address put us outside the catchment area of preferred school). We're hoping to get a waitlist space but it does put us in a muddle on how much we should prepare LO for September.

She's aware that she starts school but other than that, we have kept it very vague - she knows we cannot choose her school, and she knows that there's a school near our old house as we walked past it a lot, but hasn't entirely put 2 and 2 together and assumed she's going there. She hasn't asked for any more info yet but I worry that as we get closer, other kids will start talking about it and she might ask.

Her nursery is also asking for school name to prepare with the new school. We've advised them of our allocation but that we're on a waiting list and hoping to switch. I guess for them, there's no harm them having the conversations but I'm not sure if we should delay visits from potential headteacher, or just go ahead and ask that when they visit, they don't mention which school they're from so there's no expectation from our LO should we get our preferred place and switch.

Just wondering how other parents have dealt with it in the interim when they were hoping to switch to a preferred school, or how things panned out if you did switch during the process.

Do you know where you are on the waiting list and how realistic it is you’ll get a place?

Can you phone the desired school tomorrow and explain the situation? There is often a lot of movement between now and september.

I'd just talk generally to your DD about "school". My ds asked a million questions before our places were allocated and I just said, we'll find out which colour jumper school you'll go to nearer the time.

It's worth trying to find out your likely chance of getting the preferred school before the settling sessions, if they have them, though.

I'd just keep the conversation general and read generic books about starting school, rather than focusing on preparing her for a specific one. My dd had fairly minimal prep with her transfer to primary (in an adjacent area of the same city) so her nursery didn't liaise with her primary at all, and there was just one visit to the school in the summer term. She settled in just fine. I don't think the 4 yos really talked much about the specific schools they were going to either, it wasn't a big subject and they were far more likely to chat about their favourite Peppa episode or the sweets they like.

Waiting list places are given mid-May. We're a really short distance to the preferred school so I'm hoping we'll be high on the list but essentially there's no way of knowing the probability - there could be 1 space that frees up, there could be 5+! Obviously if we're way down on the waiting list it's probably low likelihood but even being first on the list could mean nothing..the joys of the process!