Home to school transition in the early years

For every child, starting nursery (or school) for the first time can be a huge, sometimes traumatic, adjustment.

These cards have been designed to help practitioners support children’s day-to-day transition between home and setting. They can be used as a resource for both settling new children into the setting and reinforcing a positive transition for children who are already there.

The downloadable templates on this page will help you make two sets of cards:

• ‘home to setting’ cards showing photos of familiar people, things and places from a child’s home life
  
• ‘setting to home’ cards showing photos of familiar people, things and places from a child’s daily routine when they are with you in the setting

These are particularly useful to use with children for whom English is an additional language.

If you would also like to see simple chat, play and read activities we have designed for parents and carers with children aged 0-5, please visit Words for Life.