Support and encourage them by making learning a part of everyday life.
Some ideas include:
READING AND WRITING
- Read to them every day. You can take turns reading one page each.
- Visit the library together and help them choose books to share.
- Help them write, email or text family and friends.
- Read different material - bus timetables, maps and recipes.
- Talk about interesting words and look up the meaning of words in the dictionary.
- Discuss things you see when travelling together - signs, cars, buildings and people.
- Make a game of it by playing ``I Spy''.
- Encourage them to write shopping lists, birthday cards, and thankyou notes.
- Encourage them to read alone; you could let them choose between reading or sleeping for the first 30 minutes of bedtime.
- Put magnetic letters on the fridge and ask them to make different words with them.
- Show your child that reading is fun by reading for pleasure yourself - magazines, books and newspapers.
MATHS
- Try making up different types of patterns by drumming, clapping, stamping, dancing or drawing.
- Have them compare the price of products while out shopping; ask them to ``pick five apples'', ``get a 500g bag of muesli'' or ``half a litre of milk''.
- Help them practise their times tables or counting forward and backwards to ten or 100.
- Get them in the kitchen - weighing, measuring, checking the temperature, and timing while baking or helping cook dinner.
- Ask them to figure out how much change you'll get back from a purchase.
- Make up stories with numbers such as ``we have four fish and two cats: we have six pets''.
- Tell the time to and with them - six o'clock, half past, quarter to.
- Look at junk mail and ask them what they would buy if they had $10 or $100 to spend.
- Make paper darts of different weights and designs to see which flies the best.
- Help them learn to estimate things, like how tall they are, how much their bag weighs, or how long it will take to travel to their friend's house.
