If your child is in the Tūī team (classes being Nest Tahi, Nest Rua or Nest Toru), 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:

• find a comfortable, quiet place away from the TV and read for 10-15 minutes

• make some puppets – old socks, cardboard tubes, cut-outs on sticks – that you and your child can use to act out the story you have read

• read songs, waiata, poems and rhymes – sing them together, too.

 

Remember, when they are reading, your child will still be coming across words they don’t know. When this happens, you could remind them to think about what they already know to do when they get stuck. If that doesn’t help you might ask “What word would make sense that starts like that?” or “What do you know about that word that might help?” If they still can’t work it out – tell them and praise their efforts.

 

• talk about the story and the pictures, other stories you have read, and experiences you have both had that are like those in the story

• sometimes you can be the listener, sometimes the reader and sometimes you can take turns. They might like to read to the cat, the dog, their teddy or a brother or sister

• all children like to be read to, so don’t stop reading to them – no matter how old they are

• encourage your child to read all sorts of things, simple recipes are great – you get to eat what you’ve read about, too.

 

Talk with your child all the time about what you are reading/cooking/learning – and give them time to talk with you.  This will help build their vocabulary.

 

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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Writing

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

• write lists – ‘Things I need from the shop’, ‘Games to play when I am bored’, ‘Things I want to do in the holidays’. - The last one can be cut up and go into a box or bag for a lucky dip when the holidays finally arrive

• write out recipes or instructions for other people to follow (especially fun if the instructions are for an adult)

• keep a diary of your time at home, your child can draw the pictures for each day too

• write letters, cards, notes and emails to friends and family

• make up a different ending for a favourite story together and get them to write it down

• write poems or songs together

• ask them to write about pictures they draw

 

Keep writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.

 

Don’t worry if your child’s letters are sometimes backwards or words are misspelt at this age, the important thing is that they have fun writing at home.  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

It is important you talk together about maths, even if it wasn’t a subject you enjoyed at school.  Have fun making numbers and patterns together.

 

Some ideas for home are:

• Find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood, e.g. find 7, 17 and 27 on letterboxes

• Count forwards and backwards starting with different numbers, e.g. 25 - 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19 and back up

• Make patterns when counting forwards and backwards, e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 10, 20, 30, 40, 50

• Do addition and subtraction problems by counting forwards or backwards from the biggest number, e.g. 8+4=, 7-3=

• Learn the doubles facts, e.g. 4+4=8, 6+6=12, etc.

 

You can talk about the different numbers around your home as well, you will find there are numbers everywhere, in recipe books, on clothes, devices, ask questions like, how many times can you find the number 10 around the house?

 

You can also find different shapes to name and talk about around the house too.  Doors, windows, TVs, etc.

 

Together with your child, play games and use maths language..

• play games and do puzzles; eg jigsaws, “I spy something that is longer, bigger, smaller than…”

• do water play using different shaped containers and measuring cups

• bake – talk to your child about the recipe/ingredients and how many pieces you need to feed everyone

• dance to music and sing/clap to favourite songs make and play stick games with tī rākau or newspaper rolls play with a pack of cards – make up addition and subtraction problems using numbers to 20 look at a calendar – “how many days/weeks until an event?”, “how many days in the month?”, “how many weekends?”.

 

Remember that the way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different from when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.

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