Learning at Home
Reading and Sharing Books
Sharing books and developing a love of reading is really important. Talking to your child about the books, as they read, is really important. This ‘book-talk’ or ‘book-chat’ develops children’s vocabulary and comprehension skills.
Click on these links to view some videos with fabulous tips for getting the most out of sharing a book with your child and developing ‘book-chat’.
The House that Once Was (Age 7+)
These websites have some great resources:
- Fairy Tales and Stories for Kids has lots of animated stories to enjoy. Can your children retell the story to you after they have watched one of the videos?
- CBeebies have a playlist of their Bedtime Stories, in which people read popular children’s books. Why not record your own version on a mobile device?
- Watch this collection of book trailers from Scholastic. Could you make a trailer for one of your favourite books?
Spelling
Here are some free spelling games online that children and families can play together. It is often the ‘spelling talk’ and discussion around the answers that is most valuable when ‘practising’ spellings.’
EYFS – Little Bird Spelling Game
https://ictgames.com/littleBirdSpelling/
KS1 – Spelling Games
https://spellingframe.co.uk/spelling-rule/113/1-ai-Vowel_digraphs_and_trigraphs
KS2 – Superheroes Game
https://www.bbc.co.uk/games/embed/small-town-superheroes?exitGameUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fbbc.co.uk%2Fbitesize%2Farticles%2Fzncgvk7
Maths
There are lots of great ways to support your child at home with mathematics.
The key is to make it as fun and positive as possible and playing games is an excellent way of doing this. Carefully selected games can help with recognising patterns, creating mental images of numbers and helping to become fluent and flexible with calculations. Some examples of games you could play:
Shut the box, Rummikub, Card games, Dominoes, Battleships, Pick up sticks (with scoring)
Some examples of some specific online maths games you could play (click on the link):
How-close-to-100-handout (game to print off and play) and How close to 100 instructions
BBC Super Movers – Times table songs
Links to other useful websites that can support maths:
numberblocks - This BBC website is especially suitable for EYFS Reception children
Mr DeMaio creates fantastic educational videos, including this playlist of songs to help your children learn their multiplication tables.
Laugh Along and Learn also have a collection of Times Tables songs that your children can sing!
This playlist from Happy Learning English has some times tables songs, as well as videos about shapes and measurements.
The Singing Walrus has lots of songs to teach children about numbers and counting
Parents can also support their children in a number of other ways.
- Talk about their understanding. Allow the children to articulate what they can do and show you with their preferred method as this will identify the area they may need support with. Often children understand a large portion of what is required but may require support on a single area. Use the phrases ‘Show me what you can do!’ and ‘Which part of the question do you find difficult?’
- Use Mathletics with your child. Mathletics is our new online resource designed to support learning at home. Objectives are supported by help videos and the programme intuitively changes the pitch of questions to suit the needs of the learner over time.
- Practise multiplication tables. Multiplication tables are a vital skill and help children to generate other known facts. Learning them can be done in a number of fun ways; through songs, using the TT Rockstars app and through games such as Ping-Pong that the children are familiar with.
Computing and online safety
At Great Smeaton, we use a specially designed programme called ‘Purple Mash’ which supports the school with the delivery of high-quality computing lessons.
Every year group has a unit on online safety and this theme is also revisited throughout the year.
These lessons are always fun and engaging and pupil feedback has been excellent!
On The Internet Book
'On the internet' is a learning-to-read book for children aged 4 and above. The large, bright illustrations show all the different ways that the internet can be used for.
Find 'On the Internet' here: https://www.childnet.com/resources/a-learning-to-read-book
Other Childnet books for younger children include:
Smartie the Penguin (3 to 7 year olds)
https://www.childnet.com/resources/smartie-the-penguin
Digiduck's Big Decision (3 to 7 year olds)
https://www.childnet.com/resources/digiduck-stories
