While the school year is winding down, and families gear up for the summer holidays, we wanted to spend some time thinking and planning for the year to come. Whether you have a child who just finished one of their first years, or a child who will start school in September, this post is for you. Often times, we focus on academics when thinking about school, but there are so many essential skills that fall outside of literacy and numeracy.

The last thing
we want to
do is pile on

so instead we are introducing 8 essential skills (Hanley cite) that can fit seamlessly into your current plans for summer. The fun part is that so many of you are already creating opportunities for learning during your child’s day. Have you asked your child to go get their shoes? This is a one-step direction! Have you asked your child to wait for an item while you finish a task? This is an introduction to tolerating waiting! Both of these are examples of things you do everyday that might not seem like learning or support for the classroom, but let’s take a moment to pause and think about that.

Every day your child goes to school they will practice locker routine when they arrive including shoes, jacket, and backpack. The teacher will instruct them to be put away, and to wait in a line-up before going to the classroom. Aha! Essential skills that you’ve been practicing at home have now become so very relevant at school.

Below we have listed 8 essential pre-requisite skills (Hanley cite) for school and in this summer series, we will be discussing how we can creatively integrate these skills into our daily routines:

• Reliably responding to name when it is called
• Responding to single step instructions
• Responding to multi-step instructions
• Tolerating a non-preferred task or situation
• Adult or peer attention is diverted to another adult or peer
• Access is denied to a certain area or a toy is in use by peer or adult
• Being told ‘wait’ for an item of interest or activity
• Tolerating another child entering play