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.

Our Chat, Play, Read booklet is filled with simple activities, including songs, games and ideas for chatting, all suitable for 0–3-year-olds, that can be incorporated within daily routines at home. It is available in 19 different languages, and is ideal to share with parents and carers.

You might also like share the link to our Words for Life site to help familes discover a host of ideas to support communication development at home.