If you have a pre-schooler, then your mind is probably constantly wondering what you can do to help ensure that your child is school ready.

But what exactly is school readiness?

School readiness can be explained as skills, knowledge and abilities that children need to have to succeed in formal schooling, which, for most children, begins at grade 1. It includes cognitive, social, attentional and self-regulation skills, which lay the foundation of your child’s future school success.

Here at Future Nation Schools, we believe that it is not the responsibility of teachers alone but also the parents, when it comes to monitoring and nurturing these skills for the benefit of your child’s educational development.

In this article we share some easy tips, inspired by our unique Project-Based Learning (PBL) teaching methodology, that you can use to better prepare your pre-schooler for “big school’ with regards to your child’s numerical ability, composition and co-ordination.

1. Numerical ability: PBL helps children gain valuable knowledge and skills by moving them away from their immediate environment and expanding their view to explore real world challenges. Children are naturally curious, which gives you a great opportunity to train and nurture crucial skills in your child from an early age. For example, most children learn at an early age how television remotes and mobile phones operate by imitating the people around them. To enhance your child’s numerical skills, encourage your child to read the numbers out loud when he/she is looking for their favourite TV channel or pretending to make a phone call. Turn it into a game and, if he/she gets the numbers correct, offer a reward. This encourages counting, auditory memory and number concept which provides for your child a sense of what numbers are and what can be achieved with understanding them.

2. Composition: The benefit of using PBL approach is that it allows children to physically engage in real-world problem-solving. Composition refers to your child’s ability to read, write and differentiate between similar numbers or letters. For instance, having encouraged and nurtured your child’s numerical abilities, introduce him/her to drawing or tracing numbers on a piece of paper. These experiences will enhance letter recognition, sequencing and makes the learning process effective and engaging.

3. Co-ordination: Fine-motor skills and co-ordination are very essential skills to your child’s early development, this includes the ability to use the smaller muscles of the hands in activities like holding a pencil, constructing Lego blocks and opening of lunch boxes. Encourage independent exploration by allowing your child to create, draw and figure out how certain things around him/her operate. Self-discovery is a key component of PBL which ignites and nurtures your child’s imagination and curiosity. For example, encouraging your child to write or draw a grocery list for the house links real life challenges with your child’s educational development. This creates a sense of benefit for them while nurturing and improving their co-ordination skills.

By using PBL techniques in your home, you can create a crucial foundation for your child’s development and, in turn, set them up for success in their educational journey.