Supporting your child at home

Supporting your child at home

If learning is fun, your child will be eager for more! Make up rhymes to help remember times tables, play games to improve Maths skills and memory, and read stories together. Give your child lots of encouragement and praise, rewarding their efforts as well and their achievements.

Read, read and then read some more. Reading should be part of your daily routine. Bedtime stories provide an enchanting end to the day.

Most schools will follow a reading scheme and will often send books home in your child’s book bag. Collins Big Cat is a popular choice for many schools as it includes a variety of formats, well-known authors and a great mix of fiction and non-fiction books. Look out for Collins Big Cat Reading Lions, a new range of reading books for home that complement the readers your child is using at school.

• Encourage play. Through movement children learn about their world. They acquire self-confidence and self-esteem through play, especially in the motor domain. Provide your child with opportunities to play and discover. Get ‘stuck in’!

• Look at homework tasks together, talk about the activity and make sure they understand exactly what it is they need to do. Once they have finished, talk together about what they have learned and whether they found the activity difficult.

• Encourage your child to do ‘little and often’ for the most benefit, so they do not get too tired – a day at school can be exhausting!

• Reassure your child that there is no reason for them to frightened by testing, be matter-of-fact about tests and just present them as a small part of your child’s time at primary school.

• Make sure you have a great selection of books at home to help children with tricky spellings or to understanding the meaning of a word.