There are lots of ways to establish strong links between home life and Kindy. Familiar routines and practices help support consistency giving children a sense of control of their environment. Behaviour, sleep and rest, toilet training and hygiene are all important things to consider when building routines and practices with your child.
Having clear boundaries and guidance strategies helps a child understand their limits. It’s important that positive role modelling are practised by family and Educators to ensure your child gets consistent messages about what is acceptable behaviour.
Its best to advise staff about the routines you use at home for sleep and rest , such as settling techniques and if your child has a comfort item like a blanket or a special toy. It’s important to talk with staff about routines or practices that are used at home for sleep and rest time.
Ensuring your toilet training routines and strategies are shared helps everyone stay on the same page and helps keep everything consistent in their journey towards full toilet training. Ensuring you are normalizing and promoting good hygiene at home will help children at Kindy with the familiarity of washing hands and wiping nose.
The key to maintaining consistency across home and Kindy is open communication between families, educators and children. This provides a strong foundation to develop partnerships, programs, experiences and routines that meets the needs of your child and family.
It also is important for you to provide the Kindy with current information about your child’s experiences at home, as well as information about any requirements that you have or issues that are affecting your child. This will help educators to understand what is happening with your child outside of the service and follow up on this during your child’s daily experiences and routines at the service.
The Educators in turn will share with you experiences your child has had during the day. They will bring up positives and negatives. Working together with families Educators will work with the children to help them through their goals.
Working together and building strong links between home and Kindy is the best possible way to help your child settle into Kindy and continue to grow and flourish in a nurturing environment.