Here are some general ideas to help your child with Literacy & Numeracy at home. Please note that there’s a selection here for all ages and stages, so feel free to choose whichever you feel appropriate for your child.

Here are just a few suggestions, although I am sure that you will be able to think of many, many more.

• Sing songs, sing nursery rhymes, sing the ‘alphabet song’ • Talk to your child about special dates such as their birthday• Help your child to learn important life skills such as their full

name, address and date of birth• Play lots of games like I spy and board games• Complete lots of jigsaws• Do lots of puzzles together – word searches, crosswords,

suduko, spot the difference, dot to dot• Discuss vowels and consonants• Play games like count the syllable• Challenge your child to spot rhyming words• Have fun with words all beginning with the same sounds

Read, Read, Read!Read Together - Research carried out by the ‘National Literacy Trust’ has shown that the longer children keep an enjoyment of reading going, the greater the benefits are.

Encourage your child to read everything and anything as long as it is age appropriate for your child – fiction, non-fiction, comics,

magazines, recipe books, instructions, karaoke songs, the list is endless. Even as your children get older and they feel that they want to read by themselves, it is important that you still make time to read together in order to ensure they are reading and pronouncing words correctly and understanding what they read.Take it in turns by reading a sentence, a page or a chapter each.

Reading All Around Us• The world is full of letters and words that you and your child

can read together. Food packaging labels, cards, television guides etc, etc.

• It is important to show your child the value of reading for everyday purposes. Let them see you reading too!

There are so many other activities to do! You could:- • Cook alphabet spaghetti and say letters together as you eat

them.• Play a word hunt. Write random words on bits of paper and

place them around a room. Say one of the words and ask your child to find the right word.

• Put post-it notes on objects around the house so your child can read and learn new words every day.

Talk, Talk, Talk!• If possible, include your child when discussing everyday

activities • Talk about things that you have done together• Outdoor activities like gardening and planting seeds etc can

also provide a world of new vocabulary. • Other fun activities can include:• Sharing rhymes, poems and songs. • Share and talk about family histories and family photos. • Look at picture books or art books and discuss what you like

or don’t like about them• Collect cardboard and other household items for your child

to build with• Look at ‘junk mail’ leaflets and discuss the items that are for

sale – could be whether the items are useful, affordable or necessary

• Listen to simple radio programmes or podcasts together and discuss the content.

• Play vocabulary games with your child

Tell Stories!Make your stories as real or imaginative as you like!

Talk about :- Your child’s favourite toy or your favourite toy as a child• another family member• a pet• a favourite fictional character from a book or television

program• a famous person• the work of people from different professions, such as

astronauts, firefighters, nurses, doctors, pilots, hairdressers, electricians, plumbers, painters, artists, authors ….. The list is endless. Ask them what they would like to do when they are older.

Encourage your child to think about what they want to be when they are older?

Many children nowadays don’t know what they want to be when they are older.

• Tell stories using different voices, puppets, or a finger play to make it more exciting.

• Ask your child to re-tell their favourite stories• Have a dress-up box for your child to use for storytelling

and imaginative play.

Some Writing Ideas

You could try some of these writing ideas:• Write a shopping list or add items to a list.• Keep a pegboard/pin board to write and read family

messages.

• Give your child a pad of sticky notes to write reminders for themselves.

• Plan and write your weekly menu/chores/activities together.• Write a letter or card to send to an older relative • Write captions for photographs and if you have time

arrange them into a family photo album.

• Write labels for your child’s art works and creations.• Make words and phrases using magnetic letters and stick

them on the fridge or on the bath.• Make and write greeting cards, birthday cards, postcards

and thank you notes.• Keep a family calendar on display and write down family

events.• Keep a diary, especially to show to grandparents when you

can eventually see them.• Make some speech bubbles …. Who said what?

So now that you have heard so much about literacy, let’s take a closer look at some numeracy ideas.Many parents feel slightly afraid and worried about numeracy and maths but really we should learn not to be as we're using numeracy an awful lot every single day (often unknowingly) and we use it in very natural situations.

We need to have numeracy skills to solve problems and make sense of numbers, time, patterns and shapes for everyday activities like cooking, reading receipts, reading instructions and even playing sport. Try to:-

• Encourage your child to count slowly and clearly

• Count everything and anything!• Encourage your child to take time to form their numbers

neatly, carefully, correctly and the right way round • Help your child to work out what type of calculation they

need to do• If they get frustrated, try to help them remain calm and just

move on to the next question.• If children can learn their number bonds and times tables

early on, that makes an enormous difference. If they're confident with their counting and times tables they're a lot more confident with their numbers and mathematics in general.

• Number bonds are all the addition and subtraction facts firstly up to 5, then up to 10, then up to 20.

• E.g (up to 5) 2 + 3 = 5 2 + 2 = 45 – 0 = 5 3 – 2 = 1

• E.g (up to 10) 2 + 7 = 9 4 + 2 = 69 – 4 = 5 10 – 2 = 8

• E.g (up to 20) 12 + 3 = 15 16 + 2 = 1815 – 7 = 8 20 – 8 = 12

Maths today is about understanding number patterns. There is always more than one way to get the right answer. Children are taught mental strategies, like using number lines, to encourage them to figure problems out in their heads.

More things to do:-

• Play lots and lots of games (especially as a family if you can)

• Board games, snakes and ladders, connect 4, junior monopoly, bingo, lotto, Uno.

• Jigsaws • Play lots of memory games like ‘Kim’s Game’, ‘I went on

holiday and in my suitcase I packed…’ My Gran has a fruit shop and in her shop she sells a fruit beginning with a.

• Do lots of ‘Dot to Dot’, Wordsearches and ‘Spot the Difference’ activities

• Look at signs when you are out and about. • Playing hopscotch• Sorting the washing into different coloured washes• Matching socks• Lego, duplo bricks, kliko, stick bricks etc• Playing card games such as Snap, Pelmanism and Uno and

Dominoes• Playing dice games• Singing songs to learn days of the week and months of the

year• Playing ‘What’s The Time Mr Wolf’• Looking for patterns everywhere and anywhere• Play with playdoh • Baking • Lots and lots of drawings• Pen drawings where they take their pen for a walk• Lots of cutting out to develop cutting skills• Painting – finger painting, fruit and veg printing, using

different sizes of paintbrushes and rollers.

Even More Ideas• Colouring in and trying to stay within the lines• Practising to put on their clothes and being able to fasten

buttons, zips, velcro and shoelaces. Also being able to put on jumpers, polo shirts and trousers/ shorts the right way round and know how to fix them if they are inside out.

• Peeling their own fruit• Being able to open and close their own water bottle• Setting the table or playing and setting up a picnic. Getting

the correct number of knives, forks, spoons etc.• Sewing/ threading games• Build a den

As previously stated, many of these are things that you may already be doing at home or may have encountered when you yourself were a child. Please don’t forget that ‘Education City’ has loads of games and activities, for a range of curricular areas, that your child can play as well.

Take care and stay safe, Ms Lennon