Chapter 4: Play as the Main Road in Children’s Transition to School

This chapter deals with children’s transition to school and play. The first part focuses on transition and shows a number of problems deriving from lack of continuity between preschool and school. One solution to these problems is to create transition strategies and activities. Besides a number of transition activities, the author argues for play as a pivot for successful transition, with close attention to specific dialogical reading that precedes play. Thus play is not seen as children’s own free-flow play, but as an educational activity in which the preschool teacher has an active role.

Children’s transition to school is a major political and educational topic. For some children, transition from one educational setting to another presents problems, and for that reason practitioners, researchers, and policymakers focus on this issue. The reason to support children’s transition has at least two coherent dimensions: (1) to support each child’s best interests and (2) to make the best conditions for all children’s school success and lifelong learning.