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

Abstract

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.

1. Introduction

Elementary school entry is one of the earliest and most significant educational transitions in a child’s life, which is beyond a mere spatial event where a child moves from an early-childhood institution to elementary school. Through this stage, children encounter new spaces, schedules, rules, peer relationships, ways of interacting with teachers, and unfamiliar learning expectations, which affect how they come to understand themselves as learners and members of the school community (Dockett & Perry, 2021). Accordingly, the transition to school is no longer internationally reduced to a one-time enrollment event or to an issue of an individual child’s school readiness. Amid this international trend, Korean educational authorities have put forward “kindergarten–elementary school linkage (Yu-Cho Yeon-Gye)” as a national policy task to support a smooth transition between early-childhood and elementary education, further promoting policy initiatives such as the “Yu-Cho Yeon-Gye bridge semester.”

However, in actual educational settings, school transitions are often narrowly explained using the functionalist language of readiness and adaptation. In many countries, early-childhood education is increasingly regarded as a stage for preparing children for elementary school. Through this process, instrumental elements, such as early literacy, numeracy, behavioral regulation, and learning attitudes, are emphasized (McLean et al., 2026; Moss, 2013; Murray, 2025; Wood, 2010). This trend is directly linked to concerns about the “schoolification” of early-childhood education, whereby early education is organized less around children’s present lives, play, and relationships and more around the demands of subsequent schooling, thereby forcing early academic learning and performance.

Young children in South Korea are no exception to this trend. In the period leading up to elementary school entry, many children are exposed to so-called “school-readiness” activities, including accelerated learning in Korean and mathematics, workbooks, and one-off school visits. Furthermore, this preparation is generally oriented toward equipping children in advance with the cognitive and behavioral skills they are expected to have. However, this approach has the limitation of relatively neglecting the experiential dimension in which children actually form relationships and develop a sense of belonging within unfamiliar school spaces and among unfamiliar people. In particular, the discontinuity of information and relationships between early-childhood institutions and elementary schools—two distinct institutions—has been identified as a factor that heightens anxiety and confusion experienced by children and families during the transition process (Kim, 2024). In practice, however, these institutional efforts related to kindergarten–elementary school linkages are still often reduced to functional preparatory activities or one-off exchange events intended to help children adapt to school in the short term. This is closely tied to the reality that, even though Korea’s 2019 Revised Nuri Curriculum espouses a child- and play-centered curriculum (Ministry of Education & Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2019), social perceptions and on-the-ground practices surrounding elementary school entry remain strongly bound to the logic of adaptation, preparation, and academic acceleration. Thus, in South Korea, the disconnection and tension between play-centered early-childhood education and academically oriented elementary education appear to be relatively pronounced, providing an important theoretical and practical context in which to examine the issues of schoolification and educational continuity highlighted by international transition discourse.

Existing transition research has made multifaceted contributions in areas such as identifying factors related to school adaptation, measuring school readiness, and analyzing curricular linkages; however, it has several limitations. First, by understanding transition mainly as a process whereby children must adapt to the elementary school system, the discussion of how children’s current experiences are relationally connected to their elementary school experiences has been relatively limited. Second, although the importance of play in supporting the transition to elementary school has been consistently emphasized, few studies have empirically examined what role play actually serves in relationship formation between young children and elementary school students and in the construction of meaning around school spaces. Third, prior transition activity research has largely focused on applying activities predesigned by researchers or teachers and verifying their effects, yet relatively few studies have examined the process by which an activity is shaped through participants’ opinions and interactions. Consequently, Degli Esposti and Cigala (2025) recently evidenced the need for transition research to more actively reflect children’s actual experiences and participatory processes.

Accordingly, this study implemented a play-based elementary school transition support activity in which five-year-old children and first-grade elementary school children played together and explored qualitatively how the participating children experienced and constructed their peer relationships and perceptions of school over the course of the activity. Concepts that emerge during the activity, such as relational continuity, children’s agency, and belonging, are not states measured at a single point in time but become visible only as relationships and experiences accumulate across the sessions; the study, therefore, followed the activity as it unfolded and recorded what the children experienced within it. In this way, the study illuminates the meaning of transition practices organized around relational continuity and children’s participation in actual educational settings and contributes practical and academic implications for elementary school transition support. The specific research question established to achieve this is as follows.

• Research Question. How do five-year-old children who participated in the play-based elementary school transition support activity experience and construct their peer relationships and perceptions of school over the course of the activity?

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Ecological and Relational Perspectives on the Transition to School

The core theoretical framework guiding this study is an ecological perspective on the transition to school. Rimm-Kaufman and Pianta (2000) defined transition not as an attribute of the individual child but as change in the relationships exchanged over time among the child, peers, teachers, the family, and institutions. From this perspective, whether a transition succeeds depends not on what a child has acquired before entry but on whether the relationships connecting the two settings are actually formed; children’s school life after entry is likewise closely associated with the quality of the peer relationships they have formed (Margetts, 2002). The discussion of co-construction, in which transition is a process that children and adults construct together, rests on the same premise (Griebel & Niesel, 2009). Placing this ecological and relational framework at the center, the following sections examine in turn children’s participation and agency, and the potential of play for transition support.

Recent research explains school transition as an ecological and relational process involving children, families, teachers, peers, institutions, and the community, paying attention to the continuity that children experience between their prior educational experiences and new school experiences (Dockett & Perry, 2017; Fabian & Dunlop, 2002; OECD, 2017; Perry et al., 2014). This continuity extends beyond ease of adaptation and is closely linked to children’s emotional stability, relationship formation, learning engagement, and, ultimately, their sense of school belonging. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2017) has likewise emphasized that transition should be prepared as a child-centered and carefully organized process.

2.2. Children’s Participation and Agency

This participatory discourse on transition holds that children should not be understood as passive recipients of adults’ actions but as active participants who construct their own lives and transition experiences (Karaolis, 2026). This perspective suggests that children’s voices and participation during the transition process should go beyond a superficial reflection of interest and influence the composition of activities and the way interactions unfold (Lundy, 2007). Clark and Moss (2011) likewise argued that children should not be considered as objects of educational decision-making but as participants who provide meaningful perspectives. This view is also connected to Petriwskyj et al.’s (2005) discussion, which, over and above individual children’s readiness or adaptation level, deems school transition as an ecological process constructed through relationships and interactions among diverse stakeholders. A body of research describing transition as a process of children’s own experience and exploration also supports this perspective (Dockett & Perry, 2022).

2.3. Play-Based Transition Support and Pedagogical Continuity

Seen from the relational and participatory perspectives outlined above, the essence of support for the transition to elementary school does not lie in what else children need to acquire before entering elementary school but in how the quality of life and learning they have enjoyed in early-childhood institutions can be carried forward into the new environment of elementary school. Recent transition research emphasizes “pedagogical continuity,” whereby children’s own patterns of participation and interaction, rather than merely curricular alignment on paper, extend into the elementary school context (Fabian, 2013). Herein lies the practical possibility that play-based interaction, relationship building, and democratic participation structures embodied by children can be safely maintained and expanded, even within a new educational environment.

From this perspective, play is reilluminated as the most central educational medium and participation structure that transforms the institutional discontinuity between early-childhood and elementary education into experiential continuity. For young children, play is not merely entertainment or rest but a fundamental way of living through which they explore the world, form relationships, and assimilate unfamiliar environments into their own world of experience. Through play, children explore the implicit rules of a space, form intersubjective relationships with peers and teachers, and re-signify an unfamiliar school environment not as a frightening turning point but as a familiar place that is an extension of their own lives (Kim & Suh, 2025). As play situations presuppose interactions and shared experiences over external performance and evaluation, children can form a new sense of belonging under a relatively low psychological burden. In transition research, belonging is not a by-product obtained after school adaptation but a core experiential mechanism that drives children’s active participation from the early stages of transition (Mayr & Ulich, 2009). Recent research understands belonging beyond a state of being present in a particular place and as a process constructed through relationship building and participatory experience (Antonsich, 2010), a view that is also connected to understanding school transition as a process of forming relationships and expanding opportunities for participation within a new community.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Research Design

This is a qualitative study designed to explore the experiences of five-year-old children who participated in a play-based elementary school transition support activity. Relational continuity, children’s agency, and belonging as they emerge during the activity are processual in character and are not readily captured by indicators set in advance; the study, therefore, collected interview and participant observation data across the whole period of implementation and interpreted them through reflexive thematic analysis. Because the content of each session was not fixed in advance but was adjusted session by session to reflect participants’ views, the process by which the activity was implemented is also described as context for understanding the participants’ experiences.

3.2. Activity Development Process

3.2.1. Literature Review and Pilot Study

This study developed a play-based activity to support the transition to elementary school among five-year-old children based on a pilot study (Kim, 2025) conducted with five-year-old and sixth-grade elementary school children from June to November 2019. The pilot study confirmed the possibility that play-based activities could provide opportunities for young children and elementary school students to meet and form positive experiences with school, while simultaneously identifying challenges such as asymmetric interaction due to the age gap, teacher-centered activity planning, insufficient collaboration between teachers, and limited reflection of parents’ opinions.

Accordingly, the activity in this study was organized around collaboration (assistance) between children and teachers in a first-grade class at a nearby elementary school. The voices of the children and early-childhood teachers were reflected throughout the implementation of the activity. First-grade elementary school children were selected as helpers, considering the implication of the pilot study that an overly large age gap could result in asymmetric relationships and imbalanced participation in play. In addition, the opinions of multiple stakeholders, including teachers, children, and elementary school students, were gathered to specify the timing, frequency, and duration of the activity. The content of play was flexibly adjusted for each session based on the opinions that the children themselves proactively suggested.

This approach was also consistent with discussions in the domestic and international literature emphasizing relational continuity and children’s agency (Dockett & Perry, 2017; Fabian, 2013; Lundy, 2007, among others), and it served as foundational material to specify the age of helpers, session structure, and operating procedures for this activity. This developmental approach also constituted the methodological distinctiveness of this study and a key condition underpinning its ecological validity because the experience of school transition is inherently context-dependent and relational, and experimentally controlled treatments that exclude participants’ authentic voices and concrete field conditions risk distorting the field.

3.2.2. Concretizing the Activity Framework Based on Helpers’ Opinions

At this stage, the operating structure of the program, including the age of helpers, total number of sessions, general flow of each session, teacher collaboration system, and manner of parental involvement, was determined, yet the specific content of activities to be carried out in each session was not finalized. The main contents of the framework concretization are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Main content and rationale for concretizing the activity framework.

Identified Challenge	Modification	Rationale for Modification
Asymmetric relationship between older elementary students and young children	Participation limited to first-grade elementary students	Strengthening reciprocal play relationships
Teacher-centered activity planning	Children and elementary students jointly decide on play	Strengthening children’s participation rights and initiative
Limited interactions	Expanded from 4 to 8 sessions	Expanding repeated meetings for relationship formation
One-off meetings	Introduction of a regular, continuous meeting structure	Ensuring relational continuity
Insufficient teacher collaboration	Regular consultation between early-childhood and elementary teachers	Strengthening educational continuity
Limited parental involvement and input	Regular parent interviews and reflection of interview results	Expanding parental involvement and input

3.2.3. Activity Development Process and Final Composition

Instead of finalizing each session’s content after the basic framework of the activity was concretized, the eight sessions were continuously shaped over the implementation stage, reflecting the opinions of helpers and participants. For example, an activity centered on introducing the school was initially planned, but parents suggested that children and elementary students needed time to get to know one another, so the first session was adjusted to focus on pairing up and self-introduction. Such adjustments were not exceptional cases confined to a few sessions but were a general practice that children, elementary students, parents, teachers, and researchers shaped together throughout the entire implementation period. The final activity was implemented over eight sessions from 13 September to 19 December 2023, at an early-childhood institution and a nearby elementary school in City C, and was organized in the sequence of relationship formation, expanding interaction, collaborative experience, and experience of the school space. Table 2 presents how each session was initially planned, the input it went through, the activity it was adjusted for, and what was ultimately implemented.

Table 2. Composition and implementation of the play-based elementary school transition support activity.

Session	Timing	Activity Name	Duration	Opinion Provider	Free Play	Location	Educational Focus
1	13 September 2023	Pairing up, self-introduction	40 min	Teachers	O	1st-grade classroom	Relationship formation
2	27 September 2023	One-step tag	50 min	Elementary students	O	1st-grade classroom	Expanding interaction
3	11 October 2023	One-step tag	60 min	Children	O	Elementary school playground	Expanding interaction
4	25 October 2023	Typhoon game	60 min	Elementary students	O	Elementary school playground	Expanding interaction
5	7 November 2023	Tail-catching game	80 min	Children	O	Elementary school playground	Expanding interaction
6	22 November 2023	Group activity	80 min	Children and elementary students	△	1st-grade classroom	Collaborative experience
7	6 December 2023	School tour, library visit	80 min	Teacher, children and elementary students	△	Elementary school	Familiarity with school
8	19 December 2023	Snack party	80 min	Elementary students and children	O	1st-grade classroom	Closure of relationships

Note: O indicates a session in which a full period of free play was ensured, and △ indicates a session in which the proportion of structured activity (e.g., group activities, school tours) was large, so that free play was not fully realized.

The activity was implemented during the third class period (10:40–11:20 a.m.) of the first-grade elementary school schedule. Although the initially agreed-upon time was the 40 min third period, as the activity gradually came to include the recess periods before and after it, the actual time required was approximately two class periods (80 min).

3.2.4. Principles of Activity Operation

Rather than keeping the content of each session identical, this study conducted the activity such that its core principles remained consistent. Specifically, four core principles were maintained in each session: (1) shared play; (2) reciprocal interaction between children and elementary students; (3) participant-informed activity planning; and (4) relational continuity. Accordingly, while specific content could be modified in part based on participants’ opinions, the purpose and operating principles of the activity were consistently applied across all sessions.

3.3. Research Participants

3.3.1. Activity Participants

The activity participants in this study were 13 five-year-old children from an early-childhood institution in City C. The target population was five-year-old children who would enter elementary school the following year, and in particular, children whose catchment area overlapped with that of the participating elementary school so that they were likely to enter that school on graduation. This was a deliberate choice intended to secure the conditions under which relationships formed during the activity could carry into the children’s own school life after entry. Institutions were selected by the researcher, who directly approached early-childhood institutions whose catchment area overlapped with that of the participating elementary school and explained the purpose and procedures of the study; among those that expressed interest, it was confirmed whether they had a five-year-old class following the 2019 Revised Nuri Curriculum and whether the institution head and homeroom teacher consented. Thirteen five-year-old children were enrolled in that class; all 13 met the eligibility criteria, and consent was obtained from the legal guardians of all of them. No child was excluded or withdrew during the activity, and all 13 attended all eight sessions, so no additional selection bias arose from absence or attrition. It should be noted, however, that the participants were recruited through non-probability sampling from a single institution, so the findings are not representative of the age group as a whole but are an account of how these particular children experienced this particular activity.

3.3.2. Activity Implementer

The early-childhood teacher of the class implemented the activity together with the researcher and the first-grade homeroom teacher and provided observational information on children’s changes in play and relationships through interviews conducted during the activity. The children are the participants on whom this study’s analysis is focused, while the early-childhood teacher, as a co-implementer of the activity, provided the data necessary to understand the children’s experiences. Accordingly, this study’s findings are presented with the children’s experiences at the center, while the early-childhood teacher’s observations and statements were used as supporting evidence for the context in which those experiences were formed.

3.3.3. Helpers

Twenty-four first-grade children and one elementary school teacher from a nearby elementary school participated in this activity. First-grade children played with the young children and shared the school space with them while the elementary school teacher provided input through interviews during the process of concretizing and implementing the activity. In presenting the results of this study, rather than directly quoting helpers’ statements, helpers’ interactions were revealed indirectly through the accounts of the activity participants (the children); therefore, the focus of the study remained on children’s experiences of the transition to elementary school.

The analytic corpus was fixed as the interview data from all 13 children who attended every session and the participant observation records relating to them. Interview data from the helpers—the first-grade children and teachers—and from the parents were used as supporting material to establish how the activity was adjusted in response to participants’ views.

3.3.4. Ethical Considerations

This study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Sookmyung Women’s University (approval code SMWU-2307-HR-049-01), and the approved consent forms were distributed to the participants. Prior to implementation, the purpose and procedures of the study were fully explained to the institutional heads, teachers, and parents, and their consent was obtained before proceeding. Children and elementary school students were given age-appropriate explanations of the study and activity processes, and their willingness to participate was confirmed. The collected data were not used for any purpose other than research, and the personal information and anonymity of all participants were protected. The storage and management of the research data followed the procedures specified in the approved research protocol. Interview audio files, video records, transcripts, and field notes were stripped of personally identifying information and assigned pseudonyms immediately after collection and were then stored by the first author on a password-protected, encrypted storage device within the institution. Access to the data was restricted to the first and second authors, and the original video records were kept on a separate offline storage medium after transcription was completed. All data will be retained for the period specified in the approved protocol and then destroyed. Because the data were approved on condition that they be collected and used for research purposes only and not released externally, they are not deposited in a public repository.

3.4. Qualitative Data

Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews and participant observation in order to explore the experiences of the children that emerged during their participation in the activity. All interviews were conducted by the first author and, with participants’ consent, were audio- and video-recorded and then transcribed verbatim.

Interviews with the children were conducted on eight occasions, yielding 33 pages of transcript. Seven of these were group conversations held in the classroom immediately after a session, each lasting around ten minutes; the remaining one was an individual interview conducted midway through the activity with a small number of children. Interviews with the first-grade children were conducted on five occasions as group conversations, yielding 21 pages of transcript. Interviews with the teachers—the early-childhood teacher and the elementary school teacher—were conducted on seven occasions, yielding 74 pages of transcript. Interviews with parents began with four participants at the activity-refinement stage, two of whom continued to the end, and were conducted on four occasions, yielding 35 pages of transcript.

Interviews with the children were organized around four kinds of prompt: prompts about the experience of that day (“How was going to the school today?”, “What was fun?”, “Was there anything disappointing?”); prompts about change over time (“This was your fourth visit to the school. Does it feel different from the first time?”); prompts about their perceptions of school (“What kind of place do you think school is?”, “What will you do when you become an elementary school student?”); and prompts about the people they had played with (“Who did you play with?”, “Do you want to play with that older child again next time?”). Follow-up questions were added according to the children’s responses.

Participant observation was recorded with four cameras: two worn by the researcher and the early-childhood teacher, respectively, and two fixed cameras recording each session as a whole. During sessions, the researcher kept keyword-level field notes and, after each session, transcribed the children’s play and conversation while reviewing the footage repeatedly. In the early sessions, transcribing a single session took about three days, but from the fourth session onwards, the volume of talk and gesture exchanged between the children and the first-grade children increased, and transcribing a single session took more than a week.

The data used in the qualitative analysis of this study, therefore, comprise the transcripts of interviews with the children (8 occasions, 33 pages), the first-grade children (5 occasions, 21 pages), the teachers (7 occasions, 74 pages), and the parents (4 occasions, 35 pages), together with the whole of the participant observation records from the eight sessions. The primary material for the analysis is the interviews with the children and the participant observation records; the interviews with the first-grade children, teachers, and parents were used as supporting material to establish the context in which the children’s experiences were formed.

3.5. Data Collection Procedure

The data collection proceeded in the following order: refinement of the activity, implementation of the activity, and the interviews and participant observation conducted alongside it.

To refine the activity, interviews were conducted with children, elementary school students, and teachers. These preliminary interviews confirmed the improvement points identified in the pilot study and the needs related to the transition to elementary school, which were reflected in the age of the participants, session structure, play content, and operating procedures of the activity.

This activity was implemented over eight sessions from September to December 2023. During implementation, children and elementary school students participated in play together, and the specific content of each session was not fixed in advance but was continuously adjusted to reflect the opinions of children and helpers. In other words, refinement of the activity did not end at the preliminary interview stage but continued throughout the entire period in which the activity was implemented. Observation and interviews were carried out at every session: interviews with the children and the first-grade children immediately after each session, and interviews with the teachers before and after each session.

3.6. Data Analysis

Qualitative data were analyzed using the reflexive thematic analysis approach proposed by Braun and Clarke (2006, 2021b). Reflexive thematic analysis treats themes not as entities already lying within the data waiting to be discovered but as analytic outputs the researcher constructs through engagement with the data and treats researcher subjectivity not as a bias to be controlled but as a resource that makes analysis possible (Braun & Clarke, 2019). It also presumes neither a predetermined coding framework nor a consensus coding procedure and assumes that codes and themes continue to be revised and refined as the analysis proceeds (Braun & Clarke, 2021a, 2021b). All interview data and observation records were read repeatedly to achieve familiarity with the data, after which initial codes were generated; similar codes were then compared and integrated to construct provisional themes, which were repeatedly reviewed and refined to arrive at the final themes. Accordingly, in this study, the first author, who was present throughout the activity, coded the whole corpus, and the second author read the transcripts and the coded material independently, after which the two authors together adjusted the boundaries and naming of the provisional themes. In keeping with the reflexive approach, this collaboration was treated not as a reliability check but as a way of opening the first author’s interpretation to another perspective. The quality of the analysis rests on sustained engagement with the data, on the correspondence between interview statements and observation records, and on the transparency of the analytic path (Braun & Clarke, 2021a).

Coding proceeded primarily inductively. The activity itself had been rebuilt from the pilot study on the basis of what the children and teachers said they needed, and the analysis likewise began from what the participants said and did rather than from a coding framework settled in advance. The transition literature functioned as a background that sharpened what to attend to and was not used as a framework for classifying the data. First-round coding was semantic, staying close to the participants’ own expressions, and moved to latent coding as codes were gathered into themes.

The first author designed the activity together with the participating teachers, was present at every session as a participant observer, and conducted the interviews. This involvement was the condition that made it possible to notice fine-grained changes in the children, and at the same time a condition that could incline the reading toward a favourable view of the activity. To address this in the analytic process, the researcher recorded her own expectations and moments of surprise in a journal after each session and transcribed and reviewed together the scenes she felt had gone well and those she felt had not.

4. Results

4.1. Qualitative Analysis of the Children’s Experiences

In accordance with the research question, this section examines how the children who participated in the activity experienced and constructed their peer relationships and perceptions of school over the course of the activity. Three themes were constructed from the data.

4.1.1. From Unfamiliar Encounters to the Formation of Meaningful Relationships

Through repeated play experiences, the children first formed relationships with the people they met within the new elementary school environment rather than with the environment itself. In the early sessions, children gazed awkwardly at their assigned older brother or sister figures or moved around holding the teacher’s hand while waiting for guidance. However, this awkwardness rapidly diminished once shared play began. The elementary students adjusted the level of play to the children’s needs and repeatedly explained rules. During play, they naturally supported children’s participation; for example, by asking “Want to do this?” or by bringing objects closer to the children.

“My older brother brought me a pebble. Only he and I know where we hid it. Next time we’re partners, I want to be with him again.”

(Child Park, 11 October 2023)

“It’s more fun when I play with the older kids. They play with me really well. I want to see them again next time.”

(Child Kim, 7 November 2023.)

Children’s memories began to center less on the play itself and more on with whom they had played. Teachers likewise observed this change: “This morning the children said they were happy and excited that their kindergarten friends were coming—I hadn’t even told them that in advance, but they remembered.” In later sessions, children naturally approached other older brothers and sisters beside their assigned partners, proposing to play together first during free play, or remembering the partners with whom they had played in earlier sessions.

The place where relationships formed was not the pairing the activity had arranged in advance. The buddy pairing introduced in the first session was intended to ease the awkwardness of the first meeting, but in the interview after the second session, the first-grade children said they had in fact found it easier without a partner. “It was more comfortable today because I didn’t have a partner.” “Looking after my little one was a bit hard. Today I could just concentrate on the game.” Pairs were not assigned again in later sessions, and relationships formed in places the children chose for themselves.

By around the fifth session, clusters had formed that were closer than anything in the earlier sessions. The children moved around holding hands, made up their own rules for their games, and could account for the affiliation when asked.

Child: Our shoes are similar.

Researcher: They do look the same.

First-grader: They’re not the same. Mine’s Marshmallow and hers is Cinnamoroll.

Child: It’s not Marshmallow, it’s My Melody.

First-grader: Marshmallow, hee hee.

Child: We became friends because our shoes are similar.

Researcher: Is that how you became friends? Since when?

First-grader: Since yesterday—I mean, since last time!

(Session 5 implementation record, 7 November 2023.)

The waiting had by then become mutual. The elementary school teacher reported that her class asked repeatedly when the younger children were coming. “Mine really miss them and look forward to the day they come. That’s good to see, and they’re learning to make relationships through it.” Her initial worry at the start of the activity had been the opposite—that looking after the younger children would be a burden, and in particular that her children would be upset at not being addressed with honorifics—but this did not materialize.

Repeated shared play did not simply provide children with a play experience; it was a process through which children observed and imitated the rules and play styles adjusted by the older students, thereby broadening their own ways of playing with peers. Indeed, the early-childhood teacher reported that, as the activity progressed, children increasingly explained the newly learned tag game rules to their peers or suggested playing together during free play at the early-childhood institution outside of the activity’s session times. Repeated play experiences with first-grade children were thus a process that widened the children’s own repertoire of peer interaction beyond the sessions themselves.

4.1.2. From an Image of School to Imagining the “Self” Within School

As the activity progressed, the way children understood elementary school gradually changed. In the early sessions, elementary school was still a space children had not yet experienced, and the image of school as a place for studying was strong. This perception was clearly evident in the early interviews.

Child: Oh, me too!! Teacher: Right, that was uncomfortable, but the teacher told you all along—at elementary school, you can’t go to the bathroom whenever you want. Child: You can’t go during class. Child: But you can during playtime. Teacher: Right, but the play we just did was actually class. Children: Huh?? (Sounds of surprise).

(Child interview after Session 2, 27 September 2023.)

However, through repeated visits to the school and shared play, this perception gradually changed. Children directly used various spaces in the school, including the classrooms, playground, library, cafeteria, and gymnasium, and naturally experienced school life through everyday explanations from the older students. Questions aimed at understanding school life as a whole continued, such as “Can’t you do art at school?” “Where do you eat lunch?” and “Why are there two playgrounds? There’s more fun stuff there.”

What the children were able to be curious about, however, extended only as far as the spaces they had actually entered. When they were asked before the tour in Session 7 which place they most wanted to see, almost every child named the canteen. The early-childhood teacher read this simply as “our class’s interest in food—they like eating”. Yet up to that point, the children had been only in the first-grade classroom, the playground, and the corridors between them, and the canteen was the one other space they had passed on the way. There were, in other words, only a handful of places they could name as somewhere they wanted to see. For children who ate in their own classroom, a separate room for meals was also the point at which the change in school life could be pictured most vividly.

The early-childhood teacher said much the same. “Looking round the facilities would help. Right now they don’t know what’s there, so they have less to be curious about. If they look round this time, they’ll become more curious and more interested.” After the tour, the children’s questions did indeed widen beyond the canteen to the library, the health room, and the hall. The children’s curiosity was not a disposition they already possessed but varied with the range of spaces they had been able to visit. This shows that asking children what they would like to do does not by itself secure their participation and that widening the range of experiences from which they can choose has to accompany it.

“I was curious what elementary school looked like, and now I know because we went there.” “I think I’ll like going to school because the principal (vice principal) was kind. They greeted us and smiled and were nice.” “I think it’ll be nice that there’s recess at school.” “I think I’ll be able to use the school facilities right away. It seems like it’ll be fun there.” “No, no, that seems kind of scary. That doesn’t seem fun. Ah, no, no!”

(Child interviews after Session 8, 19 December 2023.)

Notably, this anticipation was formed through experiences with the people children met at school, going beyond facilities themselves. Although children said school would be fun, they explained the reason through shared experiences, such as “because the older kids played with me” or “because my older sister showed me where to get water.” This suggests that, without the activity, information about school might have remained a vague source of worry, such as “having to study a lot” or “taking tests,” limiting the formation of expectation. By contrast, it is interpreted that as first-grade children directly shared concrete and enjoyable information—about recess, play spaces, and school facilities—room was created for expectation to form alongside fear. However, some children still expressed anxiety or reluctance toward the unfamiliar school environment even at the end of the activity, showing that expectation and anxiety can coexist differently across children.

Children were undergoing a process of reconstructing school not as an unfamiliar future place but as a space they would soon inhabit. For children who participated in the activity, school was no longer something to be understood through explanation but was gradually becoming a world in which they themselves would participate.

4.1.3. Beginning to Participate in the Ways of the School Community

As the activity progressed, the children naturally internalized the rules of the school within the school community, rather than simply following instructions. In the early sessions, the children had difficulty moving several steps at a time in group games or waiting for a turn, but this gradually changed with repeated school experiences. In shared play, such as with one-step tags, children were more often observed trying to follow the rules than before, and the amount of time they waited after being eliminated until the game ended increased.

“Normally, when eliminated kids gather together it would usually turn into chaos, but they waited so well.” “The older kids probably watch how things are done and pick up on the mood.”

The order became clearest, however, at the point where one child ran against it. Session 6 was run in the form of a lesson, with the elementary school teacher standing at the board. Throughout that time, one child, H, called out answers without waiting. When the teacher asked what came to mind when they thought of Korea and one first-grade child answered, H shouted over them; while another child who had been nominated was answering “the rose of Sharon”, H’s “Me! Me!” came again. The early-childhood teacher quietly cautioned H twice, but H continued, and when told to raise a hand, raised it while calling out “Dokdo! Dokdo!” When the teacher began “Today we’re going to learn about the rose of Sharon—”, H cut in loudly with “The rose of Sharon has bloomed!”

This was the first occasion on which the first-grade children expressed any complaint about the younger ones. In the play sessions they had let breaches of the rules pass without comment: a child who moved more than one step, or who took a turn out of order, was accepted in silence. In the lesson, however, the same latitude did not apply. One child complained, “I was going to say that next,” and the early-childhood teacher eventually moved H to a group at the back of the room. The first-grade children murmured: “Why is he sitting over there?” “Why was he taken out?” And one child answered as if it were obvious: “Because he was talking.”

What this scene revealed was an order the first-grade children had maintained without stating it, and that order became speakable only once it had been breached. For the children watching, it was not an adult’s discipline that established the norm but the first-grade children’s own reaction and the matter-of-fact explanation offered by one of them.

This change was confirmed during the school tour. When moving through the hallways or passing in front of other grades’ classrooms, the elementary students told the children, “We need to move quietly,” or “Come walk this way,” teaching them how to move around the school. Children initially responded somewhat playfully yet later lowered their voices and walked in line. This suggests that school rules may have been experienced not as external control but as a form of communal order for living together.

5. Discussion

This study explored qualitatively how five-year-old children who participated in a play-based activity developed to support their transition to elementary school experienced and constructed their peer relationships and perceptions of school. Three themes were constructed from the analysis. The children formed relationships first with the people they met rather than with the unfamiliar setting itself; they moved from understanding school as a place for studying to picturing themselves living within it; and they learned the ways of the school community not through instruction but through the conduct of children a year older than themselves.

The widening of the children’s ways of playing with peers reads less as a consequence of having more opportunities to play than as the result of learning the manner of interaction itself through a concrete partner, the first-grade children. Children repeatedly experienced rules and play styles that first-grade children adjusted to their level, thereby broadening their own ways of playing with peers, and teacher observations confirmed that this expanded repertoire of interaction also carried over into free play in early-childhood institutions. Moreover, the fact that relationships formed not in the pairings the activity had assigned in advance but in places the children and the first-grade children chose for themselves shows that transition support is not completed by designing a structure intended to produce relationships. This is consistent with prior research indicating that positive peer relationships form an important foundation for the transition to school (Dockett & Perry, 2022; Margetts, 2002).

Information conveyed through people was likewise central to the change in the children’s perceptions of school. Without the activity, school might have remained for children a vague object of worry—‘a place where I have to study a lot,’ ‘a place where there are tests’. However, the children received concrete and enjoyable information directly from first-grade children about recesses, play spaces, and school facilities, gaining room for expectation to grow alongside fear. The fact that children who, in early interviews, understood school only as a place to study or expressed vague anxiety came, as the activity progressed, to reconstruct school as ‘a place where the older kids are,’ ‘a place where we played together,’ and ‘a fun place,’ with the nature of their questions shifting from fear to curiosity, supports this interpretation. At the same time, the fact that the material from which the children could picture school was confined to the few spaces they had entered suggests that asking children what they want does not by itself constitute participation, and that widening the range of access is a condition of participation (Lundy, 2007). This is consistent with the arguments of Fabian (2013) and Griebel and Niesel (2009) that relational continuity and emotional stability must be provided for a successful transition to school.

Notably, these changes were formed through children’s own participation and peer assistance from first-grade children, rather than through the adults’ support alone. Recent transition research emphasizes understanding children not as passive beneficiaries of the transition to school but as active participants (Einarsdóttir, 2011; Karaolis, 2026; Lundy, 2007), and this study reflected this perspective in the actual implementation of the activity. As the activity was repeated, children increasingly formed relationships on their own initiative, proposed play, and actively explored the school space, a pattern that can be understood as a process in which, as participatory experience accumulates, children actively construct their own positions within the school community.

The conventions of the school, meanwhile, reached the children through the conduct of the first-grade children rather than through instruction, and became speakable only at the point where one child ran against them. In play, the older children accepted breaches of the rules without comment; in a lesson, they did not, and their visible discomfort, together with the explanation one child offered, made explicit a norm that had been operating unstated. This shows that what a transition activity conveys to children is not a list of rules but the experience of a community that has them.

Taken together, these findings show that children’s experience of the transition to elementary school may depend less on what they have acquired before entry than on whom they have come to know, and how, inside the school they are about to enter.

6. Conclusions

Through the implementation of a play-based elementary school transition support activity, this study proposes one perspective for understanding the transition to elementary school. The transition is better understood not as a preparatory process of acquiring the skills needed before entry but as a process in which relationships and information accumulate gradually through collaboration with elementary school children and teachers (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000). The children who took part in this study came to know particular older children they had chosen themselves rather than assigned partners; they moved from understanding school as a place for studying to picturing themselves within it, using as their material the spaces they had actually entered; and they met the order of the school community through the conduct of children a year older rather than through adult instruction. None of these changes reduces to a list of skills to be acquired in advance of entry.

These results indicate that transition support practice needs to take relational continuity, children’s agency, and collaboration with elementary school children as its core principles. The three principles did not operate as separate items but as a single process. Relationships could continue because there were concrete partners the children could meet repeatedly; the children’s requests could be translated into actual activities because the content of the activity was open to change in response to participants’ views; and the material from which the children could picture school increased as experience of using the school’s spaces accumulated. What matters in transition support is not the order of the sessions or the kind of activity but whether these three conditions are met together.

In practical terms, this study shows that early-childhood–elementary linkage education need not take the form of a newly developed program to be delivered. A nearby elementary school, the first-grade children in it, and time set aside so that children can play together are resources that already exist in most local communities. Linkage education can, therefore, be redesigned not as an activity that helps children acquire skills in advance of entry but as a way for two institutions to share time so that children can form relationships and experience spaces in the school they are about to enter. This perspective also offers one practical alternative to the concern over the schoolification of early-childhood education.

7. Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

This study has practical significance in that a single researcher planned and coordinated the entire process from the pilot study stage through actual field intervention, thereby realizing, in an actual educational setting, a multiparty, collaboration-based intervention that would not be easy to attempt at the level of an individual researcher. However, limitations arise from that very structure, and these are set out below together with directions for follow-up research.

First, the collection and interpretation of the qualitative data were carried out by a researcher directly involved in the activity. The first author was a co-implementer of the activity and the interviewer, and at the same time the analyst. Reflexive thematic analysis treats such involvement as a resource for analysis, but even so, the interpretation presented here remains the reading of someone deeply involved in the activity. The independent reading of the second author, who did not take part in the activity, was used to check the balance of the interpretation, but it is entirely possible to construct different themes from the same data. Follow-up research would benefit from the participation of a researcher outside the implementation team in the analysis so as to widen the range of interpretation.

Second, this study reports a single activity carried out in one early-childhood institution and one elementary school in one city. The participants were the 13 children of a single class, and the conditions that made the activity possible were particular to that school. The findings should, therefore, be read not as generalizable to children of the same age as a whole but as an account of how these children experienced this activity. If cases of similar activities implemented in other regions and institutions accumulate, it will become possible to see how children’s experiences vary with the conditions in which an activity is placed.

Third, this study covers the period up to the children’s final session. Whether the relationships formed during the activity carried into their actual school life after entry was not established. The choice of the school that most of the participating children would enter as the site of the activity was itself made with this connection in mind, so follow-up research tracking the children beyond entry is needed to examine that connection directly.

Fourth, the experiences of children who have taken part only in the usual teacher-led early-childhood–elementary transition activities, rather than in collaboration with elementary school children, were not examined. It would be of interest in future research to examine the experiences of children participating in such ordinary transition activities as well and to compare them with the findings of this study so as to establish more concretely the educational significance of the collaborative transition activity attempted here.