What can I do at home?

It is great help for children's confidence if, by the time they start school, they are able to:

• Go to the toilet independently
• Use a knife, fork and spoon
• Dress/undress by themselves 
• Understand simple verbal instructions
• Recognise their name
• Orally count to 10

How to help children in Early Years

Talking 

• Talk to your child as much as possible, include them in conversations.
• Give your child simple instructions to complete.
• Try not to use baby talk and use correct vocabulary
• If your child still uses a dummy/bottle just before they start school, please support them to remove these as soon as possible.
• Listen to what your child has to say and encourage them to listen carefully.

Reading:

• Start to look at books, looking at the pictures and talking through what they can see.
• Read stories and begin to encourage your child to repeat the key refrains.
• Make reading enjoyable by sharing a bedtime story together!
• Look at a range of books such as nursery rhymes, picture books/ poetry/non-fiction texts.
• There are some great stories to share at the library!
• Listen to some books on Youtube or Audible

We use the Little Wandle Phonics scheme to help teach children the sounds they need to read words and letters you can find out more about this on the website using this link:

charlton.kent.sch.uk/little-wandle/ 

Writing:

• Teach your child to recognise their name
• Begin to write their name with a capital letter for the start but lower case letters for the rest of the name
• Make marks on paper or other fun ways such as chalk on pavements, paintbrushes and water or writing in the sand!

Maths:

• Help cook - using measure to measure out ingredients
• Set the table by counting out how many plates/knives/forks needed
• Go to the shop and talk about money
• Sort toys into different categories such as shape/colour.
• Count how many steps/how many objects they can see
• Look for numbers in the environment such as numbers on a clock.

Games:

Please play games with your child such as snakes and ladders, jigsaw puzzles. This allows children to participate in social aspects of playing, taking turns and acceptance of not winning. This also allows the children to explore ways of discussing colours, shapes, sizes and numbers too!

Watching TV:

There are some very good programmes which will help children learn such as extend vocabulary and stimulate their mathematical reasoning. These will be far more beneficial if they are able to share this experience with their grown ups. We recommend Number Blocks as this has been developed to help aid maths reasoning and problem solving.