It was my son's first day at school last week. It's a mind-boggling event for parents, so goodness knows what it must be like for a four-year-old.
Luckily, help was at hand, in the form of Janet and Allen Ahlberg's wonderful 1988 book, Starting School. It charts with delicious detail a group of children as they move from their first day at school to the nativity play at the end of the first term (and the start of the Christmas holidays – so there's a happy ending). I was able to talk through with my son the likely experience of school and help him imagine what it would be like.
He's too young to articulate many of his worries, but Starting School helped address some possible anxieties. Yes, there are toilets at school. No, if you don't feel comfortable dressing up for a Halloween play or jumping over a bench, you don't have to, you can just "think about it". (NB: I have yet to this check this last assertion with my son's teacher).
As an even younger child my son loved the Ahlbergs' The Baby's Catalogue, which follows a day in the lives of a group of babies, from waking up in a cot to visting the park to falling asleep. He loved seeing the babies' "accidents": recalcitrant infants depicted feeding cake to the dog, putting keys down a drain and falling down the toilet. Parents will identify with the harassed-looking, sleep-deprived mums and dads.
The Ahlbergs repeat the trick with Starting School. Like The Baby's Catalogue, the fun lies in the detail – there's something new to enjoy with each reading. These children are putting up their hand to answer the teacher's question; these boys and girls have dressed up as rabbits; this boy doesn't want to play on the climbing frame.
The late Janet Ahlberg drew an imperfect world, but one that children recognise: when you go to school, you might be puzzled if you don't understand; you might fall over and hurt your knee; you might lose something. And here are a range of things that might upset a teacher: making a mess, being rough with another child, snatching a book so the page rips.
After seeing the inside of my son's new classroom, I'm happy to report that the Ahlbergs' representation of reception facilities (based on their local Birstall primary school in Leicester) is brilliantly accurate. It's not dated a jot, save for the presence in one corner of a few computers. These are the pegs to hang our coats. This is where we make models, and here's the reading corner. Thanks to the Ahlbergs, my son recognised his classroom and felt comfortable there. We're indebted to them.
