Regular activities for you and your child

There are 6 key areas which will benefit your child greatly and prepare them for further schooling. While you are at home with your child, we recommend different activities to help them in mastering the following areas:

1. Speaking, listening and understanding.
2. Fine motor skills.
3. Forming recognisable letters from their name and other letters.
4. Hearing and recognising initial letter sounds.
5. Counting out a range of objects reliably and recognising number and shape.
6. Fostering a pleasure for reading and mark making/writing

It would be ideal if our nursery children could be helped by parents and carers to focus on one area per day and that this learning is achieved through play, stories, songs, construction/Lego, art and crafts, role play, sand/water, playdoh and 'loose parts' (everyday objects, e.g.  milk bottle tops rather than 'toys').

Learning should be fun so, keep it short, no longer than 15-20 minutes.

If English is not the language that your family speaks at home, enjoy sharing books written in your home language.

Reading aloud to children and telling stories helps them to learn new ideas, concepts and vocabulary.

Please explore stories by talking about the pictures and predicting what might happen next in the story.

Please sing songs and nursery rhymes; play musical games together. It is a great way to train children’s ears to recognise different sounds in preparation for phonics and reading.

Always encourage your child to express their thoughts and use new words; have conversations with them at mealtimes and when doing housework.

Please encourage your child to draw and make marks as these skills are important for them to develop their writing.

Counting objects at home, such as jumps, claps, dance moves, cutlery, socks, pasta and number chanting with help your child with mathematical development.

There are also plenty of free nursery resources available for parents/carers. Please click on the links below:

Daily play

Daily play activities here.  

Audio books

Amazon is providing free audio books and songs for children. (Ideally we prefer book reading and singing than audio). You can find the audio books here.

Phonics play games

Phase 1 will be appropriate and some phase 2. You can find the play games here.

Maths activities

'Nrich' do some great activities for nursery children. You can find the maths activities here.

Websites

Website offering information on free subscriptions. You can find it here.