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.
Maths
Provide opportunities at home which use maths in a real life context.
For example:
- Practise counting forwards and backwards to 10, 20 and 100. Use common songs/tunes to help.
- Read numbers on letter boxes as you walk down the street..get kids to name the next number and discuss how they go up in 2s.
- 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 to 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. 17 - not just from 20 as children can learn the pattern but not know the sequence unless they start form 20.
*Skip counting forwards and backwards 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 reading and writing the essential spelling lists, as listed in your child's notebook.
http://www.spellingcity.com/ - enter some of the spelling words your child finds difficult into this site. The 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
Number Lines (picture of a frog)
Blobble Write (letter formation)
Spell Sight (Cimo Spelling - with penguin)
Bluster (Match 3 synonyms or ryhming words)
Word Magic (Picture of a fish on app front - entering in missing vowel sounds)
Scribble Press (Writing and illustrating stories)
Puppet Pals (Create puppet shows
Comic Strip (Create comic strips with photos, speech bubbles etc)
Show Me (Voice recording on top of drawing to show thinking - particularly good in maths)
Treasure Hunt (Variety of learning activities within the app)