Preparing a child for school - developing memory, perseverance and hand motor skills
The age of 6–7 years for a child is most often called one of the most difficult. At this age, our child not only learns to enter into social relationships with society, but also at this stage the child’s cognitive abilities are formed. An important aspect is preparing the child for school. To do this, you should pay attention to tasks to prepare for school, developing memory, perseverance, and hand motor skills. This is necessary in order to subsequently learn to write letters and numbers correctly and confidently and to teach the child to read correctly and quickly. It is very important to know and understand that the child will give preference to the most interesting and memorable tasks, that is, your main goal will be not only to guide your child in the right direction, but also to make the cognitive process bright and colorful.
At what age should preparatory classes begin?
By about 3 years of age, a child can already consciously perceive the simplest mathematical terms, so it is from this age that preparatory classes can begin. Their first stage is the introduction of the concepts “few-many”, “one-several”. After the preschooler has formed a quantitative understanding, he can begin to study numbers.
It’s worth starting with the first two ordinal numbers – one and two. It will be easier to remember them if parents give clear examples - they explain to the child that he has one mouth or nose, but there are two arms, legs, ears, and eyes. This will not only make it easier for the baby to remember the numbers presented, but also easier to learn how to compare them with the number of objects. Later, using the same principle, it is worth studying all other numbers within ten.
Despite the fact that learning numbers and ordinal counting does not seem like a difficult task, even such basic mathematical knowledge must be instilled correctly. Let's look at the most basic recommendations that you should follow.
How to prepare your child for school
What to do when a child does not want to study? How to prepare a child for school? Psychologists offer several methods to solve this problem. Many experienced mothers note the “game” method, that is, providing the child with tasks in a playful, entertaining form.
Doctors advise taking occasional breaks that include physical activity and eye exercises. You should not ignore “moving minutes”, since the child is not used to sitting in one place. Thanks to this approach, the preschooler will know that preparing for school is a fun process that he wants to return to again and again.
However, you should remember that you should not overdo it and give your child a lot of exercises to prepare for school. Everything should be in moderation. Also, do not force your child to do any task if he does not want to. It is worth first identifying the cause of the reluctance, and then trying to eliminate it. The future schoolchild should also understand that studying for school is a very responsible and sometimes time-consuming process, but if desired, it can be dealt with. The main thing is to encourage and encourage the child not only with words, but also with pleasant little surprises. “Learning is fun.” This is exactly how the process needs to be presented to a preschooler, and then preparation for first grade will not cause reluctance and rejection in the child to study.
Baggage of knowledge for a first grader
Judging by the requirements of teachers, before entering school, every child must know:
- all or almost all information about yourself and your parents - full name, place of work, telephone numbers,
- coordinates where he lives - country, town, street, house and apartment number,
- names of other countries,
- names of animals, differences between domestic and wild animals, dividing them into categories, for example, a tit should not be a fish, but a bear should not be a bird,
- times of day, seasons and their sequence,
- names of the days of the week,
- main natural phenomena,
- color palette,
- professions of people.
Some schools even ask for basic rules of behavior on the road during testing. And besides this, we didn’t talk about reading, Russian and mathematics, as a matter of course! A lot, isn't it? How to remember everything and put it correctly in a child’s brain? For this purpose, various exercises have been developed, which children begin to perform in older groups of kindergarten and hone at home.
Developmental practical tasks to prepare a child for school
Developmental tasks for children do not have to be difficult or expensive. We understand perfectly well that the need to offer a child new tasks every day is a certain necessity for a modern mother, so we invite you to use our services - download free practical tasks to prepare for school. Their advantages:
1) Variety of tasks. This is very important, because the same type of exercises weakens the child’s interest. It is necessary to diversify your activities every day. Preparing for school tasks should be interesting and exciting for the child. Psychologists also recommend rewarding a child for correctly performing an exercise to prepare for school.
2) The tasks are aimed at different types of mental activity - the development of motor skills, the development of logic, the development of thinking in children 6-7 years old.
3) Subsequently, the child himself will be able to complete practical tasks and even submit them to you “for testing,” which will further prepare him for the school learning process.
The main thing is to remember that the desire to learn is instilled in a child in childhood. Preparing for school and practical tasks from childdevelop are always interesting, not difficult and exciting.
What to pay attention to - tips for parents
Children of preschool and primary school age do not yet have a high level of perseverance and attentiveness, and therefore long and boring classes are not suitable for them. In addition, if the child is not interested in studying, then this affects both the quality of learning the material and the desire to study in the future. Therefore, in order not to overtire the child and reduce his motivation, it is better to use a game approach to learning. It will allow the preschooler to be involved in the lesson process and make the lessons fun.
In addition to the learning format, you need to monitor how the child compares his knowledge with the general picture of the world. If he studies numbers, then you need to ask him where he can see them in everyday life (on a calendar or watch dial, on TV, in a book, and so on). If a preschooler is learning the concepts of “right-left”, “higher-lower”, then you need to ask him simple questions about spatial orientation: “is the table to the right or left of you?”, “Who is taller - me or you?”
Similar examples of tasks are suitable for children under 5 years old and will help develop their skills. For future first-graders it is worth choosing other, more complex exercises.
Why and how much should you exercise in the summer?
Any written exercise should last 20-30 minutes, after which you need to take a break. It is recommended to spend at least 30 minutes on literary reading. Educational games and logic tasks can be completed at will at any time without restrictions.
Tasks for first graders recommended for completion during the summer holidays:
| Russian language (writing) |
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| Mathematics |
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| Literary reading | List of works to read. |
| Logics | Logic exercises (development of sequential thinking, the structure of which, through reasoning, leads to the correct conclusion). |
Training attention
Each of us knows that paying attention in class is half the success in studying. Sometimes you don’t even have to read the textbook after listening carefully to the teacher.
To check whether your future first-grader is ready to do everything the first time, by carefully reading, counting and writing letters, tasks to find differences help.
These can be almost identical pictures, differing in the color of the elements or the set of details. In addition to pictures, you can use words where one or more letters are replaced to train attention.
Parents also often play the game “Turn around and name it,” when something is hidden, and the child remembers what is missing or is out of place.
On the ShkolaLa blog you will find five ready-made exercises that will help your child become attentive.
We think creatively
The ability to think creatively is again developed by pictures, from which children compose stories. Explaining words, especially incomprehensible ones, is a good way to train your thinking abilities - here there is room for children's imagination to run wild!
We have already devoted a lot of time and space to the process of creative thinking. We learned to think while playing, found seven books for developing children's thinking, we have as many as 10 golden developmental tasks for mental training, and now everyone knows what it is - the first step to great success.
Assignments for first-graders in mathematics:
Mathematical tasks can be not only educational, but also bright and varied. These math exercises will help your children master the basic math skills needed for 1st grade. They are presented in a playful way, which promotes exciting learning for first-graders. In this non-boring form of learning, children will learn simple mathematical operations and understand that mathematics can be very interesting.
trace and color the pictures
Give your first grader a task: create a dotted line drawing and then color it. The complex also offers templates for writing out various figures.
find 2 identical pictures
The task “Find two identical pictures” is a way to develop attention and perseverance. The essence of the exercise is that among 6-8 very similar pictures, the child should identify two that are absolutely identical. It is worth explaining to the child how to perform the test: sequentially compare each picture, notice small details and identify two that are identical in all respects.
solve the examples and put the signs: >, <, =
In this section you will find a dozen useful examples with colorful illustrations and coloring pages that will help first-graders master equation solving skills.
come up with a problem statement and solve it: addition
Writing simple math problems helps first-graders develop language and abstract thinking. With the help of a teacher or parents, the child learns to identify such components of a task as the condition, the question posed, the solution and the preparation of an answer to it.
come up with a problem statement and solve it: subtraction
It is convenient to compose the skills of composing subtraction problems using ready-made cards with answers for control. It is easy for a child to understand the essence of the picture and solve the problem.
repeat the drawing dot by dot
Fine motor skills of still clumsy children's fingers need constant training. In addition, motor skills largely influence the development of the brain, especially the center responsible for speech and thinking. Suitable exercises for developing these skills are copying a drawing according to the proposed template.
connect the figures
Tasks on creating figures according to a given algorithm are intended to develop figurative and logical thinking in a child. At first, offer the first grader simpler options, gradually complicating the task.
solve a logical thinking problem
These are simple logic problems, the solution of which involves drawing arrows. For example, using arrows you need to connect interconnected objects (an animal and its house, an example and an answer to it), restore the order of numbers, or divide objects into groups.
Draw arrows from 1 to 10.
Match the example with the correct answer.
We reason logically
And where would we be today without logic, which is sometimes not very beloved by us, our parents, because all modern elementary school textbooks are riddled with it, this boring logic!
Among the logical tasks, the most common ones are finding the odd one out and combining them into groups based on common characteristics. So, for example, you can hide the name of a flower among the names of trees or place a berry among the fruits. By the way, these can be not only objects (nouns), but also their properties (adjectives).
Did you know that puzzles, so beloved by children, are great for training logic!
For more advanced students, you can suggest completing a sequence of pictures in which the last element is missing.
Let's help with motor skills
The development of fine motor skills begins from an early age and approaches the final stage during the school period, when the process of formation of those areas of the child’s brain that are responsible for the development of hand muscles ends.
You already know how to train your hand to write. If you haven’t come across it yet, read it, it’s written about useful things in an accessible and interesting way. Let me remind you that modeling and drawing, construction sets and applications made from different materials are effective for fine motor skills.
