Any helpful advice? Child starting school full time

DS was in "school" at age 2 (which he remembers even now) but has been home with me for the past year. The part-time program starts next month for 4 weeks, then he starts for real in September. Full day, 8:05 am to 2:40 pm.

He knows he is going to school this year. He keeps saying he doesn't want to go to school, but then gets excited when I tell him about all the fun things he will be doing.

He is very attached to me, but always has been, and I am sure there are many other kids like him. I'm just wondering if there is anything I can do to ease the transition.

Re: Any helpful advice? Child starting school full time

Day camp? Activites with kids in his kindergarten?

The idea is that you will drop him off at a place where there is a group activity.

Outside of that playdates with kids in his school.

Re: Any helpful advice? Child starting school full time

Can you start slow in August or is he going to kindergarten full time in September?

Re: Any helpful advice? Child starting school full time

I would send him to some sort of camp to help ease the transition. DS has been in preschool since he was a little over 2 years old, but I have only put him in from 9:15-11:45. Since we have full day kindergarten in our district I am sending DS to full day camp from 9-3. I want him to get used to the long day now so there are fewer surprises come September.

Re: Any helpful advice? Child starting school full time

Thank you! We cannot afford a camp but now that we've made friends we have been scheduling playdates left and right. He starts a special program for kids who have never been in school before in July. That runs for 4 weeks and is 5 days a week for 2.5 hours a day. I am hoping that will work to ease him into it.

The other thing that is making me slightly uneasy is that we JUST found out yesterday that all of the Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten classes are mixed, with equal numbers of 4 and 5 year olds in each class. I find that so strange and it's a new curriculum, so I don't have anyway of knowing in advance how the teachers will handle it.

We did the kindergarten orientation last night and while DS was slow to warm up to the activities, while ALL the other kids were running around like crazy, he was polite to the teachers. His big fear seems to be that he doesn't know how to "do things" because it was all new to him. However, when we went into a classroom with puzzles laid out on a desk, something he's familiar with, he relaxed considerably and even tried out a new activity he'd never seen before.