Tag: Literacy

For our final day of writing support I would like to share further advice and strategies to support you when supporting your child.  Writing is an important form of communication and one which plays an important part in your child’s life.

Today’s final tips will be simple ways you can further encourage writing at home using everyday routines.

 

1. Send a message

As parents you can leave messages for your child around the house, on their pillow, in their lunchbox or on a chalkboard. Encourage your child to write a response. The tooth fairy could even leave a message!!  That  happened in my house and caused great excitement leading to my child writing a response which I have kept for years!

 

2. Keep a Year in Review book:

A lovely idea is to keep a diary of things you have done as a family throughout the year. Everyone can add to this and it will encourage your child to write in it too. Pictures and photographs could also be added to make it all come to life.

 

3. Make a menu

Have your child create a menu/recipe for your family dinner. They could use the ingredients to help with spelling and vocabulary.

 

4. Copy

Think of your child’s favourite rhyme or song and get them to copy some of the lyrics.

 

5. Saying Thank You

Get your child to write thank you notes to friends and relatives.

On that note thank you for sharing in our blog posts and literacy supports and please do not hesitate to contact me for further ideas, supports or links when supporting your child with aspects of their literacy and language skills.

Have a great day everyone,

Mrs Docherty

Following on from yesterday’s support we will continue with how to support your child with writing in the early years. There are many processes taking place when your child is writing from thinking of ideas, getting the vocabulary and grammar and the transferring it onto paper, never mind the handwriting aspect too. Through this whole process your child is able to share what they have learned and what they know.

 

For today we will look at a few more ideas to help you to support your child with how to develop their writing skills and foster a love of writing.

 

1. Help them to get started

Children can often find it difficult to get started and a blank page may be overwhelming for them. This is where you can help. You could give them the first few sentences or even words to help formulate ideas and thoughts for their writing. A good way to do this is to start with a question and then create a mind map or create a bank of words form their answer to the question. This could be: What did you see on your walk today? Who is the character in your story? Where is your story taking place?  Allow your child to then free write using their thoughts.

 

2. Connect their interests

Think about your child’s interests. What is their favourite story, who is their favourite character, what is their favourite activity or toy? Whatever their interests are connect them to their writing.

 

3. Create Story Prompts

A fun way to do this is to cut out pictures from magazines with characters and settings on them. I have included a link for the story We’re going on a Bear Hunt with visuals for setting and characters  that could support your child to write the story and sequence it.

Bear-Hunt-Stick-Puppets_ver_1

 

Bear-Hunt-Story-Sequencing

 

These are a few more ideas to help you when supporting your child with writing and we will conclude with our final ideas on Tuesday. As always please get in touch if you have any questions or would like more ideas/resources for writing

Take care everyone,

Mrs Docherty

This week we will focus on another key area of Literacy which will be writing.  Throughout the week we will look at fun ways for you to support your child with writing which will build upon all of the previous advice on our other literacy skills: reading and spelling.

Writing is a great way for your child to communicate. We will focus on ways you can make writing exciting from fun activities to daily reading and writing sessions. This will help you to continue to build your child’s skills through our distant learning.  Here are some writing tips for home.

 

1. Reading

One of the first ways to support writing is through reading. Reading helps to increase your child’s vocabulary and this in turn supports your child in using these words in their writing. Try reading together every day with your younger children.

 

2. Materials

Try different materials, fun pens and pretty paper can be motivational.

 

3. Space

Just like your reading space create a quiet space for writing and provide some stimulus: this could be a story you have read, a favourite toy, or an experience you have had ex your walk in the woods.

 

4. Purpose

You could encourage your child to write for a variety of purposes such as a shopping list, a menu for your evening meal, or even send a letter to someone.

 

5. Technology

Technology can be used to support writing. Get  your child to send an email or produce a story using word.

 

I have added a few resources to help stimulate writing through games below. You could create a pirate or fairy adventure or even create your own monster and describe it!! Have fun.

Fairytale-Story-Telling-Prompt_ver_2 (1)

monster-surprise-roll-and-draw-a-monster-activityPirate-Story-

Writing-Activity_ver_4 (1)

 

These are a few ideas to help you get started when supporting your child with writing and we will continue with more ideas tomorrow. Please get in touch if you have any questions or would like more ideas/resources for writing.

 

Have a lovely day,

Mrs Docherty

I hope you have been having fun looking at and using the resources provided over the last few days to help support your child with rhyme. For our final day of how to support your child with rhyme I will share two more games and ideas. It would be great to hear how you get on with any of the games, if you get a chance to play them. Please post a comment if you feel they have been successful.

Two great games for the whole family are what we will be sharing today. The first one is:

What’s in my Bag?

Once your child can successfully recognize rhymes, this activity will help them learn to produce rhymes. Just fill a bag with several common household items. Examples of these are included on the attachment with steps on how to play the game. Just print off the list, fill your bag and you’re ready to play “What’s in My Bag?”

Whats-in-My-Bag

 

Your child will pull something out of the bag and then see if they can think of a word that rhymes with it. It doesn’t even have to be a real word!! Have fun.

 

Dinner Time

Another great game to use is Dinner Time and this can be played with the whole family and will provide great fun. Please let me know how you get on with this one. I have attached a copy of the game below with the resources you will need to play.

Dinner-Time-Rhyming-Game (1)

 

I hope you have found this week’s support beneficial and more importantly they have helped both you and your child to have fun with learning in these times.

Sending all my best wishes,

Mrs Docherty

 

Following on from yesterday’s post about rhyme we will look at further strategies and resources to help you support your child with their understanding of Rhyme.

 

A great way to do this is to play games. One great game to play is Get out of the Wagon which I have attached for you to use. In the downloadable activity below. Three word cards—like rake, cake, and king—are placed in a wagon. The child determines which word doesn’t rhyme and tells it to “get out of the wagon.”

 

Get-Out-of-the-Wagon (2)

 

Another great strategy is to use is Sharing Nursery Rhymes with your child. Nursery Rhymes are great to say over and over again and again. After your child knows the nursery rhymes, let him fill in the rhyming words. I’ve attached a list below where you’ll find some wonderful nursery rhyme collections to enjoy together.

 

Nursery-Rhymes-For-Little-Ones-Library-List

 

Enjoy the games and ideas and tomorrow I will continue to provide more ideas to make learning rhyme fun.

Have a great day,

Mrs Docherty

SUPPORTING YOUR CHILD WITH RHYME: 20.4.20

Rhyme is a great way to help support your child with reading. It helps your child to notice that rhyming words often have shared letter sequences, such as –all in tall, ball, and small. Most children enjoy hearing and participating in rhyming activities, and when they are exposed to rhyming, they usually pick it up naturally.

There are 3 stages to help support the development of Rhyme. These are:

 

• STAGE 1: HEARING RHYME: Your child gets used to hearing and repeating rhyme.

 

• STAGE 2: RECOGNISING RHYME: Your child can identify two words that rhyme.

 

• STAGE 3: PRODUCING RHYME: Your child can think of a word that rhymes with another word

Over the next few days we will look at 5 different ways you can help your child to understand rhyme and I will share resources and ideas to help also. Step 1:

1. Read rhyming picture books together.

There are hundreds of great rhyming books, and this Rhyming Picture Books Library List is a good place to start. As you read, occasionally point out words that rhyme. (“Oh, goat and boat rhyme! They sound the same at the end. Goat, boat.”)

Use the list attached to help you share rhyming picture books together like we do in Nursery and P1/2 and let us know how you get on.

Rhyming-Picture-Books-Library-List

Tomorrow we will look at a Rhyming games and also Nursery Rhymes to further support teaching Rhyme and I will include the games and further reading lists.

 

Mrs Docherty

 

 

Good morning,

Today we will complete our Reading advice for this week. I hope you have found the hints, links, strategies and resources helpful. Please look back for these posts for all of the information and as always remember I am here to help so please leave any comments or questions.

A great website to use for ideas and book recommendations is Book Trust. The site is split into ages and provides recommendations of books for all ages.

https://www.booktrust.org.uk/search/#!?cat=&type=Booklist&q=&sortOption=MostRecent&pageNo=1

On this page you will find lists of books for your children depending on their age and stage of reading. I loved looking through it as my children are older so it keeps me in touch with what’s out there! Some new books added to my reading list!

A great resource on the Book Trust website is the link to Waterstones Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell BookTrust Home Time. I have included a word document which explains what this amazing initiative is all about. It is very exciting and offers a digital hub  with a wealth of resources to support reading and illustrating. Definitely worth a look.

childrens-laureate-cressida-cowell-launches-booktrust-home-time-final

We will revisit Reading and Spelling support in the coming weeks. The next focus I will be supporting is writing.

Have a great day everyone,

Mrs Docherty