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Y0/2 Optional Extras

Talk and conversations with your children around the school values of Respect, Resilience and Integrity has value for all ages. Discussing where you have to show these values in your everyday life and recognising these traits in famous people they may know about. These values are the foundations of the attitudes and behaviours needed to be a successful learner and we need to teach our children what they look like just as much as teaching them to read, write and do maths. 

Discussing the school graduate profile of being confident, being creative, being a critical thinker and being connected is also valuable. These are the traits we would love our students to display and thinking about what a confident learner does or how a connected learner behaves can have a positive impact on their overall approach to learning.

Reading 

Regular reading to and with your child has a host of benefits, especially when time is taken to discuss the content of the book too. There is nothing wrong with rereading familiar books. 

We have scanned some of the school readers which you can access here.

Writing 

As much as possible, make writing fun.

  • Practice writing a letter from the alphabet and then go letter hunting in your house or in a book to find that letter.
  • Encourage your child to write – on paper or on the computer. It is OK for you to help and share the writing. Give lots of praise
  • Enjoy the message and don’t make your child anxious about spelling or neatness
  • Make a photo book and get your child to write captions
  • Scrapbooks are fun, too. Old magazine or newspaper pictures about a favourite subject, dogs, your family, motorbikes or the latest toy craze, pasted on to blank pages – with room for captions or stories, too
  • Don’t worry if your child’s letters or words are sometimes backwards or misspelt at this age. The important thing is that they have fun writing

Maths

 Maths is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.

  • Find numbers around your home and neighbourhood – clocks, letterboxes, speed signs
  • Count forwards and backwards (clocks, fingers and toes, letterboxes, action rhymes, signs)
  • Make patterns when counting "clap 1, stamp 2, clap 3, stamp 4, clap 5…"
  • Do sums using objects such as stones or marbles eg 2 + 3, 4 +1, 5 + 4
  • Make up number stories – "you have 2 brothers and 2 sisters. There are 4 of them
  • Make patterns when counting forwards and backwards (eg "5, 10, 15, 20 then 20, 15, 10, 5 and 30, 40, 50, 60 or 12, 14, 16, 18, …")
  • Do addition and subtraction problems by counting forwards or backwards in their heads (eg 8 + 4, 16 – 3)