Supporting Young Children’s Transition to Elementary School: Children’s Experiences of an Activity Built with First-Grade Children and Teachers

Elementary school entry is one of the earliest and most significant educational transitions, yet research has largely reduced it to a matter of school readiness and adaptation. This qualitative study implemented a play-based activity to support five-year-old children’s transition to elementary school and explored how the participating children experienced and constructed their peer relationships and perceptions of school. The activity was conducted in collaboration with first-grade children and teachers from a nearby elementary school over eight fortnightly sessions from September to December 2023, and all 13 five-year-old children in the class took part in every session. Interviews with the children, first-grade children, teachers, and parents, together with participant observation records collected across the sessions, were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three themes were constructed: the children moved from unfamiliar encounters to the formation of meaningful relationships; from an image of school to imagining the “self” within school; and they began to participate in the ways of the school community. The findings suggest that the transition to elementary school is better understood not as a matter of improving an individual child’s readiness but as a process in which relationships and information accumulate through collaboration with elementary school children and teachers.