Support for Home Learning

As part of our ongoing working with parents to support the home learning environment, we would like to regularly send home activity suggestions you can do at home to support your child’s learning.  
Your child is learning everyday with every experience you offer.  Bath times, story time, meal times etc are all times where your child has fun and learns with you. J 

Porridge Oats!
Ingredients – Porridge oats, warm water
Allow your child to explore with their fingers, moulding, squeezing, patting, rolling and dripping! Talk about the texture and smells. You may wish to add knives, spoons and tubs! Playing with this activity will encourage finger muscles, (which need to be strong for when learning to write) encourage descriptive language and communication skills. Maths skills are promoted through counting scoops, dividing and quantities. Social and emotional skills are supported through sharing and describing how it feels. Go on! Give it a go! It’s more fun than you think J
You may wish to take photos and share them in your child’s learning journey. J 
 
Caterpillars use the letters and sounds phase one document to help teach children how the alphabet works for reading and spelling. Phase one activities concentrate on developing children’s speaking and listening skills, phonological awareness and oral blending and segmenting. This term we are focusing on aspect 1: Environmental sounds. We have a spare Letter and Sounds DVD which demonstrates activities should you wish to borrow it. The document can also be found on the internet.

To support your child at home you may wish to regularly read books as part of your daily book sharing. Read to them with plenty of intonation and expression. Encourage your child to join in with the repetitive phases. Sing nursery rhymes and move to different beats. Pots and pans are great instruments! Ask your child to use his/her listening ears and play/move in  time to the beat – fast, slow, skipping, marching etc. 

Speech & Language

We often have enquiries about how well a child's speech is developing or how to introduce phonics. The Talk Listen Cuddle website run by Essex has a wonderful collection of ideas, support and guidance and we thoroughly recommend to all parents and carers. 


Letters and Sounds

We are always exploring  letters and sounds with our children. A number of activities that you can try at home to support your child's development in this are can be found here -

 https://www.yor-ok.org.uk/Downloads%20Old/EarlyYears/Phase%20one%20resources/Aspect%202%20-Instrumental%20Sounds.pdf