resources

Want to support your child at home with their maths or English learning?  Not sure how we teach things in schools? Want some ideas to support mindfulness and well-being at home? This page will give you lots of hints and tips.

 
 
Finding time to sit down and practise maths can be tricky. Here are some ideas to help you fit maths learning into your everyday routine.

Finding time to sit down and practise maths can be tricky. Here are some ideas to help you fit maths learning into your everyday routine.

Maths

Keeping maths fun and enjoyable at home is the key here! Songs, games and practical maths to use in the real world are great ways to engage your little one  in maths at home.

Practical maths at home

  • Give your child directions around the house using maths vocabulary such as left, right, forward, 90 degree turn, 180 degree turn, 360 degree turn, right angle etc.

  • When buying items at the shops try to encourage your child to notice how much it costs and then try to add items together and even work out how much change you will get.

  • When cooking encourage your child to notice the weight of different items and to use the scales to help you weigh out ingredients.

  • When going out ask your child to help you work out when you need to leave to ensure you arrive on time.

  • Make a point to mention the time of the day frequently and ask your child the time too.

  • Go on a 2D or 3D shape hunt around the house, local area or local nature reserve.

  • Use birthdays or parties as a chance to look at multiplication or division in relation to food or party bags.

  • Talk about proportions when you’re making a cup of tea or a glass of squash.

  • Make patterns with Play-Doh, Lego, colouring pencils, pasta shapes or anything you can find around the house.

  • Look for maths and numbers in newspapers, magazines, TV programmes, sport matches etc. and talk about it with your child.

Times tables songs

These songs have helped so many students to learn their tables and cement their tables knowledge. Here is a list of all of our favourite ones. These are ones that have really helped our children and we hope they help your little ones too!

Great maths games

 
It can be great to sit down and write a lovely story with your child. Here are some other ways to incorporate English learning in to everyday life.

It can be great to sit down and write a lovely story with your child. Here are some other ways to incorporate English learning in to everyday life.

English

Again the key here is to keep everything really fun and enjoyable with the main aim to develop a love of learning and a love of reading and writing. Home is the best place to make reading and writing exciting and engaging with beautiful book corners or exciting writing nooks. Making time everyday to enjoy reading and writing with your child will help their development vastly.

Ways to help at home with reading

Read. Read. Read. Don’t stop reading! Let them read anything that excites them - books from the library, books from home, magazines, comics, Lego instructions, audio books, books online and anything else that takes their fancy. 

Storylineonline is incredible! They have a wonderful selection of stories read aloud by celebrities including some great classics, such as “The Rainbow Fish” by Marcus Pfister and "Library Lion" by Michelle Knudsen. The children we’ve taught absolutely love them and we think they’re great too! Take a look!

Other top tips for helping your child to go from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’ include regular trips to your local library. Libraries are such wonderful places and most libraries will also over a huge wealth of fun and engaging activities for your child such as tea time stories, shake and boogie, pop in and play, chatterbooks, homework clubs and much more.

Another important aspect here is talking about the books you are reading. Ask your child lots of questions to check their comprehension of the text. Questions about the characters, their feelings, predictions of what might happen next, their opinion of the story, questions about what has already happened and any other questions you can think of.

Ways to help at home with phonics 

These phonics songs are brilliant! They come with actions too which have been brilliant in helping so many of our children learn their phonics sounds! In schools, phonics is normally taught in phases or groups of sounds, but there is also an A – Z run through below too if you prefer.

Use these speed sounds charts to check your child’s recall of their sounds at home too. 

Other ways to help at home with phonics is to encourage your child to ‘sound out’ the words they find tricky in books and then try to ‘blend’ them together. Mr Thorne has lots of videos online showing how to do this which are great for using with your children too. He has tonnes on his page including Geraldine the Giraffe who helps him with his phonics, he has advice for helping with your children, he has grammar tips and even tips for writing too.  

Ways to help at home with writing

  • Encourage your child to write letters for real-life situations e.g. thank you cards, party invites, letters to the tooth fairy, letters to Santa etc.

  • Help your child to learn their spellings sent home form school through ‘look, cover, write, check’.

  • Make sure your child understands the meaning of their spellings and encourage them to use a dictionary to find out if not.

  • Let your child see you writing around the house and let them help you with some of that writing e.g. writing the shopping list or to-do list.

  • Encourage your child to keep a diary.

  • Play word based games such as scrabble.

  • Play word searches and crosswords.

  • Have fun with tongue twisters and riddles and try creating some of your own together.

 
A relaxing walk along the river can do wonders for our well-being. Here are some ideas for helping to encourage mindfulness for children at home.

A relaxing walk along the river can do wonders for our well-being. Here are some ideas for helping to encourage mindfulness for children at home.

Mindfulness and Well-Being

There are tonnes of wonderful resources available to support children’s well-being and there is currently a lot available to develop mindfulness in children too.

Disney Pixar’s Inside Out is a fantastic film to watch as a family and it has so many learning points. It’s clear and witty portrayal of the brain and its emotions is so useful for teaching children emotional intelligence. It brings different emotions to life including Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust and helps children to understand their feelings and emotions. This short clip provides a synopsis of the five feelings covered in the film and is definitely worth a watch. 

GoZenOnline is a YouTube channel for children to promote mindfulness and it is incredible. There are videos and tutorials on sleep meditation, kindness, gratitude, stress relief, and breathing techniques. There are even stories on there with mindfulness messages which are great too.

Books to promote mindfulness

  • The Three Questions by Jon. J Muth

  • The Buddha’s Apprentice at Bedtime by Dharmachari Nagaraja

  • The Listening Walk by Paul Showers

  • Is Nothing Something? By Thich Nhat Hanh

  • What does it mean to be present? By Rana DiOrio

  • A Handful of Quiet by Thich Nhat Hanh

  • Peaceful Piggy Meditation by Kerry Lee Maclean

  • Take the Time: Mindfulness for Kids by Maud Roegiers

Another brilliant way to promote well-being and mindfulness in children is yoga. Yoga for children is great fun and incredibly relaxing, give it a try with your little one. You can use books such as “Good Night Yoga: A Pose-by-Pose  Bedtime Story” by Mariam Gates or you can use videos such as the ones found on The Learning Station. The Learning Station is a great YouTube channel with wonderful yoga videos, learning songs and much more. 

Growth Mindset

Growth mindset is one of the big buzz words in schools at the moment and there’s lots going on all over the country connected to it. Put simply, growth mindset is all about working hard and developing the talent that you are born with. It is the belief that success and achievement comes from hard work and determination and that everyone can ‘grow’ their brains. This belief and view on learning helps to develop a love of learning and a hardened resilience to any learning set backs. On the other hand, a fixed mindset is just the opposite -  a belief that your abilities are only due to your inherent nature and that this cannot be worked on or developed. The original term was first used by Carol Dweck in her book titled “Mindset” and the idea of developing and nurturing a growth mindset has been influential in teaching and learning across the country since. 

There are a whole wealth of wonderful resources available to help develop this positive mindset in your children including books, websites, songs, games, videos and more. Below are a few of our favourites which we have found incredibly useful over the years.

Songs

Videos

  • Ormie the Pig – a definite favourite with so many children! This one is a short animation of a very determined pig who keeps trying to eat some cookies which are just out of reach. The children find this one super funny!

  • Growth mindset explanation 1 – an animated explanation of growth mindset which can be really useful for explaining some of the key aspects of the mindset.

  • Growth mindset explanation 2 – another short animation to explain growth and fixed mindset.

  • Keep Moving Forward – a lovely short animation describing the importance of failing and learning from mistakes.