In our last Families Connect session, we evaluated what we had gained from the programme and anything that could be changed for future programmes.

The children evaluated the programme too, by using smiley face stickers on their charts and drawing pictures of what they did during the sessions.

I think it’s safe to say that all the families had enjoyable time participating in each session and using the follow up materials at home.

Mrs Berry and Miss Lowson thoroughly enjoyed running it for the first time and would like to thank the families for making it such a success.

We plan to run it again next session, so if you’re reading this and interested, please talk to a member of staff who will be able to give you more information.

In session 7 we talked about Numbers and realised how difficult in can be for children to learn numbers and number words. It is just like learning a new language. We looked at the irregularities of numbers in English and compared the to the way numbers are written in Welsh where there is a pattern to help when learning.

Many of the numbers in English just have to be learnt off by heart, making it even harder for young children. We played the bus garage game to give the children as much practice as possible with this. Lots of practice and repetition works.

In this session we talked about how important it is for children to learn to count in real life situations. 

We explored a range of ways we already encourage our children to count, when helping to lay the table, counting the number of buttons on their shirt and counting the number of sweets each person has.

By making sure there are enough plates for the number of people eating, encourages children to think about making sense of counting as well as involving them in real life situations.

We experienced how it feels for children to learn numbers by playing a game called ‘Letterland’ which highlighted some of the difficulties children face when learning to recognise numbers. This helps us to think about how best to help them as parents and educators.

All families took a game home to play named ’10 lovely things’,  to help practice counting objects and using the associated language, such as:

• Who has the most/least things?
• How many more have I got?
• How many more are needed to make 10 things?

We look forward to hearing how the children and adults enjoy playing the game and making up new rules.

This session we looked at story telling without books. We talked about using simple pictures from magazines to make up a story. We tried making up stories using small toys, each person chose four toys and created a storyline around them.

What fantastic imaginations our parents have! We talked about some other ideas to use at home with our children:

• using toys as themes for the story
• making up a story  and telling it to your teddies
• telling your child stories from when you were young
• putting your child in the story, make the name of the main character your child’s name

Each family took home a bag with a story dice, story puppets and picture cards as props for story telling. We look forward to hearing about it next week.

This week we had a fantastic session about reading books with our children. We talked about all the ways we engage our children in reading books and how to encourage a lifelong love of reading.

After snack, each family chose books to share and enjoyed looking at them at the end of the session. Everyone loved the book ‘Open Very Carefully, a book about a Crocodile with a snappy ending!

Everyone took books and activities home to keep and enjoy.

We look forward to hearing all the feedback next week.

Thanks again to our families who are putting so much effort in to all the Families Connect activities. 

We had the second Families Connect session on the theme of ‘Praise’. We explored how we praise children and practiced the best ways to praise by trying it out with each other. The parents and grandparents threw them selves into the left handed drawing activity which proved to cause some hilarity.

Everyone enjoyed a healthy snack and tried out some new fruit. Our children enjoyed making Superstar Awards and came up with good ideas to say well done!

All the children took a bag home to make more awards with their families.

We look forward to hearing how you got on next week.

We had our  first Families Connect session where we looked at the topic of ‘Feelings’ and why it is so important to help our children to understand more about feelings and emotions.  

We used ‘Feelings fans’ to look at a range of words like excited, scared, disgusted, happy, sad and we helped our children to match the emotion to the picture of the person.

We took away a bag of activities to try out at home with our children.

Miss Lowson and Mrs Berry are looking forward to hearing how our families enjoyed using the bags at home.

We are delighted to offer the Families Connect 8 week course to parents and carers of Primary 1 pupils.
Families Connect is designed by Save the Children and provides a range of activities for you to do along with your child.

• The programme covers three important areas of learning:
  Social and emotional development
  Literacy and language
  Numeracy and mathematics

It will begin on Wednesday 9th October from 1:45p.m until 3:45p.m and will run each Wednesday afternoon until Wednesday 4th December.

If you or another family member would like more information or think you would be interested in attending, please speak to either Mrs Berry or Miss Lowson who will both be running the course.

The short film gives a flavour of what takes place in a Families Connect session.