Play together and have fun!!!
Encourage independence as much as possible.
http://www.studyladder.co.nz is an excellent website to use to encourage independent learning across all areas and levels. Students can watch mini tutorials, play games or do assessment activities. Access is unlimited at school although there are some restrictions with the number of activities you can complete at home. Students' usernames and passwords are in their notebooks.
Maths
Provide opportunities at home which use maths in a real life context.
For example:
- Get your child to help with tea and ask relevant maths questions; how many potatoes will you need to get out if you are all having 2, how many chicken nuggets are there if you have 7 and Sally has 8, there are 9 pieces of chocolate - how can you and your siblings share these fairly?Ask for 1/2 a cup of flour.
- When at the supermarket; read prices of items, ask your child to get 7 tomatoes, add how many muffins are in two trays, ask how much change you will get when you spend $5, get your child to add up the coins in your wallet and see if you have enough for the milk etc.
- Look at a calendar and count how many days until something special or are left in the month - discuss which month will come next.
- Talk about the ages of people in your family and ask who is the oldest? How much older? How do you know?
- Counting pocket money - deducting money for jobs not done.
Most board games will require some maths even if it is reading a dice or counting spaces. To vary it up you can use two dice and they will have too add both before they move. Some common games which will encourage learning include;
- Bingo
- Snakes and Ladders
- Monopoly
- Go Fish
- Go Fish variation (remove 10-King. Play Go Fish but you ask for the number to make ten - 3+7)
- Memory (to make more advanced use words and number cards - six matched to 6)
- Snap
- Throw dice and race to add with a sibling
Common knowledge gaps to practise:
*Counting backwards - practise from any number e.g. 73 - not just from 100 as children can learn the pattern but not know the sequence unless they start from a particular number.
*Skip counting forwards in 2s, 5s and 10s.
Literacy
Children learn to read and write by reading and writing so provide as many opportunities as possible to do so.
Children learn to read and write by reading and writing so provide as many opportunities as possible to do so.
Examples of opportunities to write
- Shopping Lists
- Birthday Cards
- Emails or letters to family members
- Take photos and write diary entries or captions and create scrap book
- Wish lists for Christmas or Birthdays
- Invitations to events
Ensure your child reads their reader every night.
If they get stuck on a word remind them they can use the pictures, robot arms, chunky monkey or skippy frog to help work them out. (See me for definitions of these.) If a book seems to hard read the pages together, read alternate pages, or read to them instead.
Discuss with your child what happened in the book - get them to retell in their own words or using words from the story. Referring back to the book for ideas is fine.
Relate the book to their own experiences - e.g. if the book is about camping talk about a camping trip you have had or if the story has a child who is scared ask them about a time they may have been scared.
Even though they can read some big words they may not understand them, check if they do.
Spelling
Practise the weekly spelling words every night -these are in the back of your child's notebook. http://www.spellingcity.com/ - enter in your child's weekly spelling words. Website provides opportunity for children to be taught, practice, or play games based on those words.
Explore different ways of writing them; e.g. write them with paint, with water using a paintbrush on the concrete or walls of house, make them with playdough, use chalk.
Make up silly mnenomics or rhymes e.g. because (big elephants can always understand little elephants)
Typing Skills
Try the following websites to help students learn to type using the correct fingers. - http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ - teaches correct finger spaces
- http://www.primarygames.com/langarts/cupstacking/index.htm - race the clock to find the letters
