The first day of school is over. The tears shed at the gates have been dried. But now that the bell for home-time has been rung, how do we help our children process the emotional and intellectual challenges they will encounter through the first year of their primary-school life?

Starting School: Feeling Good About Primary School, a new publication by Kids' Own Publishing, was created with these challenges in mind. It was written and illustrated by junior infants from Kilkenny, to provide a framework for children, parents and educators to talk about the issues that can arise during the settling-in period of their first year. The project was facilitated by authors Mary Manley and Mary Maher and artist Orla Kenny, who asked the children about four key areas of this period of transition: what do you like about big school? How did you feel on your first day? What advice would you give your friends? What are the rules?

The children’s responses are typically blunt and often funny. They like art, playing in the yard, meeting new friends, “switching tables to let everyone have a go at different things”, and “being happy and having fun”. They learn “how not to be silly”, “how to stand up for yourself”, how “to be strong”. The first school day offered a mix of emotions for the children. One reports being “scared, excited, happy, shy and afraid of meeting new friends”.

Their advice to peers, meanwhile, is unstintingly practical and ranges from the social – “Know everyone’s name” – to how to manage your snacks: “At the first break you take out your lunch so you won’t be starvin’. You eat one thing at little break and leave the rest for big break.” Their understanding of the rules is also clear: “No boxing or spitting or pulling hair. No slapping, no tripping up, no pushing in the line.”

Transition

Most children have experience of a preschool or Montessori setting before they begin formal education, and this project, a collaboration between Kilkenny Education Centre and Kilkenny County Childcare Committee (KCCC), was part of a broader initiative designed to stress the transitional nature of moving into primary education for education and childcare workers.

Gretta Murphy of KCCC explains other elements of the transitions programme included workshop training for both infant class teachers and early-years practitioners. The central goal, she says, was to improve connectivity between childcare practitioners, primary schools and, in particular, infant teachers. One of the key principles of Aistear – the standard curriculum used in preschool – is that "children will handle transitions and changes well". With this in mind, Aistear carries over into the infant classroom at primary school, maintaining elements of play within the junior and senior infants curriculum, for example. The Kilkenny programme also included a session for parents, who are crucial in preparing children for the new environment.

Training

Agnieszka Money thought her son Leo was well prepared by his experiences in Montessori when he moved on to “big school” last year. It helped that many of his preschool classmates were moving on to the same school and that the school itself was small, with class sizes no bigger than at the local Montessori. The social aspects took care of themselves, she says, but “there was quite a training in the first weeks with the rules – taking your seat and staying in line – when the children are used to being more free”. The emotional and educational challenges, meanwhile, “are more dependent on the character of the child, I think”.

Money’s daughter, Helena, has just started at the same school. “Though we have been preparing for it for a year, because Leo was there, and she knows the teachers and many classmates, she is not as confident, and I think it will be very different for her.”

Angie Canavan’s daughter Camille also started school last year. As a teacher, Canavan knows “there is a certain amount you cannot control about the first days of school, but the most important thing for us was that Camille would feel confident and secure starting school”.

“We put a positive spin on everything. Camille’s big concern was that she wouldn’t know anyone, and we said: ‘Isn’t that a great opportunity to make loads of new friends?’”

The biggest challenge, Canavan says, is how much more regimented big school is, but she has observed how “the rules of the playground have become rules for life”.

“Camille takes them very seriously, even when she is not in school,” she says. Camille is excited about the year because, she says, “I am older and in senior infants”.

Hierarchy is one of the essential rules of the playground, but so, as many of the children in starting school emphasise, is “kindness”. The idea that appears most often in the section on advice to their peers is kindness: “Kind words, kind faces, kind hands, kind feet . . . Kind words are saying nice things, like ‘I like your hairband.’ Kind faces means smile. Kind hands means just tap . . . Kind feet means don’t trip.”

A key lesson in life, as well as school.

• Starting School: Feeling Good About Primary School is available from kidsown.ie

TIPS: HOW TO SMOOTH THE TRANSITION

Tips for parents

• Be enthusiastic about school.
• Encourage friendships.
• Help children reflect on the similarities and differences between preschool and primary school.
• Help children to ask clearly for what they want.
• If possible, get a list of classroom rules and reinforce them with your child.

Tips for teachers

• Empathise with children's feelings.
• Explain rules and routines clearly on a daily basis.
• Encourage friendships through games and discussions.
• Incorporate movement breaks throughout the day.