Summer born staring y1

[PeanutButterOnly]

Hi - I'm having a bit of a wobble about August born DS2 starting Y1. He's been fine in YR, he's a chatty soul and has made good progress, but I just see some problems ahead. Anyone in the same boat?

I'm wondering whether the change to more structured time is going to be harder for him than starting at school last September. In the end YR wasn't too dissimilar to nursery... lots of free-play.

Today he said that he doesn't like writing at school because he doesn't like having to remember to put spaces between the words. This shocked me somewhat because earlier in the year he was writing a lot at home, self motivated and enjoying trying out what he'd learnt at school. Lately he hasn't chosen to do any writing at home.

He's a head-strong character and I'm just worrying that having to follow the structure of Y1/less freedom is going to be a problem?

Thanks in advance.

Most yr1 classes usually spend the first half term doing a mixture of child-initiated learning and more focused group work, gradually building it up over time so the transition isn't such a big shock!

I found that dd1 struggled a little with each progression through the school, whereas dd2 loved the increasing structures. They are both mid year, dd2 relatively speaking is younger in her year than dd1 was. I think it is more to do with personality than age. Dd1 still harks back to being in reception but she did adapt quite quickly.

It is a very gradual change. Till Xmas it's more like reception. Don't know any kids who have struggled inc summer born ones.

I think it's personality thing too. All my dc found the more formal year 1 better than year R. Particularly my summer born reluctant learner ds. He found formal learning so much better as it was quieter, plus he didn't have the distraction of others playing while he was meant to be doing something more structured. Also the freedom meant that he felt he should have been allowed to play all the time and he resented the times he wasn't able to. In year 1 all were working at the same time so it didn't feel quite so unfair.

Some children do struggle though, but they generally adapt fairly quickly.

I think every child will cope differently.

DD was five about a month ago and she came from a very structured pre-school (uniform, designated times for reading/writing/maths etc) so in our case I thought she was going to struggle more with the play-aspect. But she seems to have done Ok, although still prefers more structure.

So I'm hoping that Y1 will be good for her and she'll fit right into it... but time will tell...