If your child is in Tūī team (classes being Nest Whā or Nest Rima), here are a number of ways that you can support your child's learning at home. 

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Reading

Reading at home needs to be fun and without too much challenge - something you both look forward to.  Some things you can do to support reading at home are:

• Share the reading, take turns and if your child is confident, encourage them to read to you

• Read your child stories in your first language and then again in English

• Let your child see you and others in your family reading - you can also read emails from family together

• Sing waiata and songs, read poems and talk about rhyming words (nursery rhymes are fantastic for children)

 

Click here to visit a website where you can search books for your child based on their reading level (which your child’s class teacher can share with you).

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It is important to be a role model for your child's reading, let them see you read and tell them what you enjoy about it.

 

If your child is stuck on a word wait a few seconds, give them a chance to think. If they are still stuck, help them to try to work the word out by saying “read the sentence again and think what would make sense”.  Ask “could it be…?” (and give a word that might fit). The pictures also help them check they have got the right word. If they still can’t work out the word, tell them and praise their efforts.

 

Help your child to link stories to their own life. Remind them about what they have done when a similar thing happens in the story.

 

Remember, reading should be fun.

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Writing

Make it interesting and give your child a reason to write.  Here are some ideas to help.

• Create a list of all the letters in the alphabet and then look around the house for objects starting with that letter

• Do some writing in your first language together - if you child doesn’t know how, this is a great opportunity to teach them

• Have your child help write a shopping list or a letter to another family member or friend from school

• Write letters to each other about something you are looking forward to or a special memory

• Get them to help you write a text message or email to family

• Talk to your child about their name and the letters in their name, what letters are the same as yours or others in your family

• Your child can write stories about the pictures they have drawn too

 

Don’t worry if your child’s letters or numbers are sometimes backwards or spelt incorrectly at this age, it’s about getting them writing and having fun doing so.  When they do writing, display it.  Put it on the fridge.  Be proud of it.  Share it with family.

 

Remember to be interested in their writing.  Talk about it with them and ask them questions about what they have written.  Remember that we often write for someone to read it.

 

 

Maths

One of the easiest ways to support maths at home is to play board games together, counting the numbers on a dice or how many moves someone gets when it’s their turn.  You can even count jigsaw pieces.  Cooking is also a great opportunity, children can count the ingredients or how many cookies, etc have been made.

 

Here are some other ideas,

• find numbers around your home and neighbourhood – clocks, letterboxes, speed signs

• count forwards and backwards - you can use clocks and fingers and toes for this

• make patterns when counting “clap 1, stamp 2, clap 3, stamp 4, clap 5…”

• do sums using objects such as stones or felt tip pens, e.g.  2 + 3, 4 +1, 5 + 4

• make up number stories, e.g. “You have 2 brothers and 2 sisters. How many altogether?”

 

Remember to use lots of mathematics words as your child is playing to develop their understanding of early mathematics, e.g. “over”, “under”, “first, second, third”, “around”, “through”, “before”, “after”

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For more information and support on learning at home, click the button below.

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