This is the first of a new series of articles on primary school children, which will describe some of the adventures children meet as they work their way up the school, and some of the ways in which you can help them to make these adventures successful. They are written by ‘Kaiwhakaako’, the young teacher whose article on education appeared in our June issue. We invite you to send ‘Kaiwhakaako’ (c/o The Editor, Box 2390, Wellington), questions or problems concerning children at primary school. His answers will appear in each issue of Te Ao Hou. AN)/£ N) XML) What's all this nonsense? It's easy really, if you just say X for jump, N for apple,) for no, / for egg, £ for top … is that quite clear? Of course it isn't, it's anything but. Yet this is what printed words look like to your five year old, and this is the way, once upon a time, he used to be taught to read. You probably just guessed that they should be read from left to right, because that is the way you usually read—but a five-year-old doesn't know this—right to left, upside down, it's all the same to him.

‘Please Miss, Here's Sonny’ Let's think about this five-year-old for a moment, the one you took to school the other day, or sent along with his elder sister (she knocked on the Infant Mistress's door, said ‘Please Miss, this is my little brother Sonny—where's your hanky Sonny’—and took off at full speed to play with the other girls). You have taken care of him since he was born and he has learned to walk and talk, and has built up a list of things which, in a shadowy way, he knows something about; he knows he mustn't play with the fire, tease the baby; he has learnt quite a lot of things by listening, he may know both his names, his address, and how old he is, he may not have seen a fire-engine but he has heard of them. Now here he is, handed over to a strange lady and thirty or forty other children all coming to look at him and ask him his name—it must be all very frightening. Sonny has come to school to learn to read. I hope you haven't been holding him up—some children still come to school scared out of their wits with stories about the teacher.

Before He Starts Here are some ways you can help him to learn to read before he comes to school. It helps if he has had some picture book to look at, some simple toys to play with, and if he has had things explained to him. (Does your three or four-year-old ask ‘Why?’ all the time? If he doesn't he ought to.). Another useful thing is to take the new child along to school yourself two or three times before he actually starts; this helps him to get used to the idea that soon he will be going to stay there all day. Read your children stories, or tell them about what things were like when you were small—or if you haven't got time for this, get one of the other children to get a book from the Infant Mistress to read the small ones (it helps to keep them quiet too). Use Kindergarten of the Air and the Children's Session on the radio, join the Infant Mother's Club or the P.T.A. If you possibly can, take Sonny to a Play Centre—you may find there's one near your home, perhaps one that's just being started, as many are these days.

In the ‘Standards’ After about two years in the Infant Department Sonny will go into Standard One. He has learned to read, is everything going to be plain sailing now? In the Primer classes and the early Standards nearly all the child's time was spent in learning how to recognize words on a page, learning new words, and reading simple stories. Meanings were simple so that the stories could be read easily, and stories were told in a very few words, the words which any child who has learned English fairly well uses when he speaks—words such as come, little, see, dog, run, and so on. Now Sonny learned his English (and, I hope, his Maori too) from you and the rest of the family; if your English is not very fluent then he has to learn his correct English somewhere else. Teachers help a little, but his main learning will come from reading and writing You know, I can't think of any more important thing for a primary school child to do than read widely and well. Every day every one of us has to read something, whether it is for fun, to get information, or to keep ourselves alive! Put it this way—all the arithmetic we use we could learn