If your child is in the Takahē team (classes being Rangi Tahi, Rangi Rua, Rangi Toru or Rangi Whā), here are some things you could do at home to support their learning.​

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Reading

Make it fun and find time to do it together, here are some ideas:

• Find the lyrics to songs you like and sing along with the song while reading the lyrics

• Play board games

• Read to your child and give them a chance to read to you too

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

• Get your child to tell you about what they are reading. Who is their favourite character and why? Is there anyone like that in your family? What do they think is going to happen? What have they learnt from their reading? Does it remind them of any of their own experiences?

• Read to a sibling or cousin - they could even read to a pet!

 

When they are reading, your child will be working at solving unfamiliar words by themself. If they need help you could ask them to work their way across the word looking for things they know that might help. At this level, reading involves bringing everything they know together to solve problems and build understanding. If they can’t work it out – tell them and carry on with reading.

 

• Reading makes more sense if your child can relate it to their own life. Help them to make connections between what they are reading and their own lives and experiences. For example, “that’s a funny story about a grandad – what does your grandad do that makes you laugh?”, “We saw a big mountain in that book, what is our mountain called, and where did the name come from?”

• Let your child see you reading and talk with them about what you have been reading

• Talk with older people in your family about interesting stories and people from the past

 

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

All our Year 3-6 students have Google accounts so can access Google Drive to write in Docs or Slides if they would like.

 

Remember to keep it fun.  Here are some ideas to help:

• Talk about interesting words with your child, especially ones that are fun to say, like “hippopotamus”. Short and simple games could involve finding how many little words can be found using the letters in the word ‘elephant’

• Make up a play and use things like socks to create puppets to act it out

• Use pictures from this folder to help with ideas for your child to write creatively

• Create a story about their favourite character, i.e. Iron Man, Spiderman

 

Children also need a reason to write, here are some ways they could:

• Write invitations or emails to friends, family or teachers they haven’t seen in a while

• Play a game of clues and hide notes around the house

• Personalising notes by cutting, decorating, sticking or stamping are great skills for coordinating fingers and being creative. Postcards are a good size for writing and sharing news

• Get your child writing what they would pack for a holiday or help to create the shopping list

• Teach them to write in your first language if they don’t already know

 

Help your child find new and interesting words to help describe what they are writing about - this will help extend their vocabulary.

 

Display your child’s writing - stick it on the fridge and share it with family.  Be proud of what they have done.

 

 

Maths

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns.  Help your child to:

• find and connect numbers around your home and neighbourhood - phone numbers, clocks, letterboxes, road signs, signs showing distance

• name the number that is 10 more or 10 less than before or after a number up to 100

• make patterns when counting in groups (skip counting) forwards and backwards, starting with different numbers (e.g. 13, 23, 33, 43 or 998, 999, 1000, 1001, 1002)

• try making different types of patterns by drumming, clapping, stamping, dancing or drawing patterns that repeat

• find out the ages of family or whānau members and put them in order

• do addition and subtraction problems in their heads using facts to 20 eg 10 + 4, 15 – 7

• use groups of 10 that add to 100 eg 50 + 50, 30 + 70

• Help them learn their times tables

 

Being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.

 

You can also use everyday objects and activities to support maths, here are some ideas:

• Telling the time, o’clock, half past, quarter to

• Help them memorise your phone number

• Identify shapes around the house and talk together about the ones that are similar, e.g. a window and a door

• Play board games or card games

• Go to a supermarket’s website and practise online shopping, this gets your child adding and working with money but also teaches them about budgets

• Cook and follow recipes together, talk about how much of each ingredient is needed

• make paper darts and change the weight so that they fly differently, work out which is the best design

• create a repeating pattern (eg kōwhaiwhai patterns) to fill up a page or decorate a card

 

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