How can you help at home?
There are lots of things you can do together as a family to keep your child's mind active and learning. Take a look under our curriculum tab for links to different websites and on your child's class page. There are some links below for dealing with feelings.
Reading isn't just about picking up a book. Text is everywhere. When you are out and about read signs, notices in shop windows, pick up the newspaper and scan read, there are lots of tourist leaflets out there which are always quick and easy to read. Find a special time in the day to snuggle up on the sofa and read together. Reading to your child is just as beneficial as them reading to you. They hear how you use punctuation, expression and nuances to decode the text.
Have a competition in the house as to who can write the silliest sentence. Look for unusual objects and write about them. Make up stories together about things that are around you. E.g. Out in the garden there lived a friendly ant. His house was at the back of the woodpile. It was number 972000. It took a long time for the post ant to deliver all the letters each day... After you have read a story draw a picture that describes everything that has been read about. This improves your child positional language and inference.
Children in Years 3 - 6 have a mathletics login and can practice their number and calculation skills regularly. Younger children love counting things. Count the number of steps on the way to school, the shops and bed. Children need lots of opportunity to use money in our digital age. Go to the shop and get them to pay for small items. Do baking together, there is lots of maths in cooking. Look for shapes in the environment. Get the tape measure out and measure your front garden. Order all of the pans into size order. Talk about time. what time will we have tea? How long is it to our favourite programme? Buy a TV times and use it to teach your child about time.
Teaching your child social skills is just as vital as academic ones. Dealing with people on a daily basis can be a daunting process. Talk to your child about the positive things that have happened. Talk through anything negative that has worried them. Ask them to think about how it can be solved. We can't always fix things for our children but we can give them strategies to deal with disappointments and upset and teach them to be resilient. Keep communicating with your child's class teacher.
