Tag Archives: family engagement

Families Connect (Week 7) – Number Names

Car Registration plates, bus timetables, road signs, clocks, phones, house numbers, post boxes, shop windows, remote controls, cereal boxes, food packaging, microwaves, televisions.…These are just a small illustration of the places that our children can see numbers every day. And by taking the opportunity to point out these numbers and name them, we can really help our children when they are learning to count.

But even more than this, we can help our children learn the names for numbers. Again, this is something that we as adults probably all take for granted. But how many times have you heard children count and refuse to include, 11, 12 or 15! This is because not only is counting complex, but our names for numbers are quite confusing too. Sadly, as you will come to see, there are no shortcuts when it comes to learning number names and not much logic either, so it is just something that our children have to learn. The more they hear and see numbers, the easier it is for them to learn them.

So, what’s so difficult about our number names? Consider the following oddities:

* How does “eleven” and “twelve” relate to “one” and “two” – and compare this to “four” and “fourteen” which is far more logical?

* Why are 13 and 15 not “threeteen” and “fiveteen”? And why are 30 and 50 are not “threety” and “fivety”?

* Why are teen numbers spoken with the unit number first but numbers in the 20s, 30s etc are spoken with the tens number (which comes first!) first – i.e. 14 (1 ten then 4 units) is “fourteen” but 43 (4 tens then 3 units) is “forty-three”?

* Why do we say “one hundred and eleven” for 111, but “Twenty-one” (not twenty and one) for 21?

As we found in Families Connect, the more you think about the English way of naming numbers, the more complicated it gets! And this is what our children are trying to tackle, at the same time as learning the order of numbers and also that they represent a value for something. It is no wonder they find this all a bit confusing! So, any games you can play, any chance you can take to spot and name numbers, to count things when you are out and about really are the least, we can do for imposing such a crazy system on our poor children!

Families Connect (Week 5) – ‘Beyond the Page’

Finding time to read together just for fun (over and above homework!), isn’t easy. But research shows us that reading together, little and often, can have a big impact. There are several things we can do to support reading at home, like trying to share books at different times of the day, telling stories together and using technology. All of these things will have just as good an impact on your children’s vocabulary, imagination and reading skills, as dare we say, homework!

In Week 5 of Families Connect we chatted about fun ways of sharing stories. One idea was to try to fit in sharing a book at different times of the day. Reading at bedtime is probably the norm and can help establish a bedtime routine. But by this time, parents are normally flagging and either falling asleep or negotiating down the number of books! Alternative suggestions were to read during bath-time and maybe even pick a fish or pirate themed book. Or to read together during mealtimes, with the added bonus of helping to keep the children at the table. For one family, trying books during dinner went down a treat and gave them a welcome break from the long-running game of eye-spy!

Telling stories when you are on the move, is another great idea to broaden literacy skills and really stirs up children’s imagination. Our Families Connect families thought that making up stories together helped to keep their children interested when out on a (boring!) walk, or on a long bus journey. But making up stories can be quite daunting for us adults. So, we looked at things we could use to help our story-telling, like cutting out pictures from a magazine or using old photos to use as prompts when at home, or using what we see around us like road signs, animals, people etc when we are out and about. We also got the chance to use the photo cards pictured below to have a practice, as well as looking at the CBeebies Storytime app as an example of how we can use technology to widen our reading experiences. Parents can have mixed views about using technology but as long as we are joining in with our children, apps and audio books etc can just be different ways of sharing stories.

So, if you are one of those parents falling asleep during bedtime stories, why not try sharing the ‘extra’ stories promised at a different time of day or making up a story together when you are going about your everyday activities. This will be great for your little one’s reading skills, can make things more fun for you too and can even help manage situations where tricky behaviour might be expected – like mealtimes, bath times and plain old boring times!

A special visitor in P1

Today, one of our Primary 1 Mums came into school to tell us all about her very important job. The primary 1 children listened so carefully to what Lindsey was saying and then got to try out all the equipment that Lindsey brought with her. It was very exciting. Here are some of the things that we learned:

There are different types of nurses.
Neonatal nurses look after little babies.
Little babies have different cots to sleep in.
Nurses use a stethoscope to listen to the babies heartbeat.
You have to be kind and caring to be a nurse.
Sometimes nurses wear a special hat and mask.

Here we are having a go at being neonatal nurses.