A child's wish to become a pupil is one of the important identifiers of his / her school readiness. Its assessment at the beginning of schooling provides a picture of the child's initial ability at the beginning of the first year of study in primary school. The focus of this article is the motivational component of school readiness, which has an impact on the individual form of adaptation of beginning pupils. The subject of the research was to find out the presence of individual motives in the structure of the emotional-motivational component of school readiness of children at the beginning of school attendance. The defined component consists of social, cognitive and moral motives, which are interconnected. We were used a questionnaire with ten items in the research activity. The respondents were pupils of the first year of study in selected elementary schools. The results showed that the social, cognitive and moral motive were presented within the emotional-motivational component of school readiness. Overall, there were positive answers to the three motives, which showed a high level of motivation in the research sample. The level of the emotional-motivational component of becoming a pupil is one of the elements ensuring the successful adaptation of the pupil at the beginning of school life. Strengthening the incentive to become a pupil, deepening the desire to learn new things and shaping social skills for existence in the classroom are seen as a tool for developing the motivational sphere of school readiness.