Reading
Learning to read confidently and fluently is vital to your child's learning and academic progress.
Our Little Wandle reading system is perfect for developing confident readers. Please ensure you listen to your child read for 5 minutes every day, celebrate their fantastic reading and complete an entry in their reading record.
Your child will also have sounds and tricky words to practise that they will bring home. Please spend time with your child daily practising these too. Be as creative as you like, you could attach the sounds or words to your cupboards or doors at home and ask your child to say them whenever they open it. Or maybe you could hide them around a room once your child is asleep for them to find and say in the morning?
Their are also some excellent websites for children to practise their phonics/reading through games. See the links below:
Useful resources to support reading and writing:
Story telling is also a fantastic way to engage children in books and enthuse them about learning to read. Try to share a bedtime story every night.
While you are reading you could talk to your child about the book, this will also encourage great listening and attention skills as well as develop children understanding. Here are a couple of ideas of things to talk about:
Make a prediction – Look at the front cover. What do you think this book will be about? What do you think will happen next?
Clarify – Are there any words that you haven’t heard before? What do you think they mean? Can we think of another word that means the same thing? Should we find a picture of one?
Questioning – Why did they say that? What might they be feeling? How do you know?
Summarise – What has just happened on this page/in this story? What has happened so far? Retell the story in your own words or draw/talk about your favourite part of the story.
Maths
Maths is also a fundamental area of learning; essential for a child's future academic success. However it is also an easy one to slot into daily activities at home, you are probably already supporting your child's learning without realising.
Counting: We can encourage counting the number of chicken nuggets on a plate, or the stairs as we walk up, even counting to "time" how fast they can get dressed or put on their shoes.
Recognising number: While out for a walk notice the door numbers or speed signs around you.
1 to 1 correspondence (counting one object and saying one number name): We can do this by helping to set the table and making sure everyone has a knife and fork etc. or maybe by packing a picnic and getting an apple and a drink for everyone.
Some other amazing activities you can do at home which supports mathematical development are:
Baking
Bingo
Cooking
Sorting objects
Doing jigsaw puzzles
Building with blocks
Playing board games
There are also some great online games linked below to help support children.
But the most important is being positive and encouraging! As teachers we hear a lot of "I wasn't very good at maths when I was at school" from parents, however your child is far more likely to enjoy and excel in maths if you model a positive, can do attitude when supporting and encouraging them at home.
Physical Development
It's so important to give our children time and space to be active and get out of breathe every day. By popping along to either the Blue or Red Park after school you can encourage your child to develop their gross motor skills, core strength and shoulder/arm muscles. Doing the monkey bars or climbing up a rope will help them to strengthen muscles they need for writing.
Got a spare few minutes but don't really want the children to just be watching the TV or playing on a tablet?
Why not give some of these a go? It's great fun for the children or to do as a family.