Dear Parents,

Many of you have been asking for ideas to keep the children ‘tuned in’ over the long summer holiday.  It is essential that they keep up with some work over the holidays or they will find it very difficult to settle back down to work in Reception or Prep 1.  In order for them to hit the ground running, please keep up with their reading.  The libraries can provide excellent resources and even comics and magazines can help to maintain their enthusiasm.  They have all come a long way in their achievements in this area so please continue with their reading to help them to retain this knowledge.  Ask them to rhyme words, e.g. you say a word and ask them to think of a word that rhymes!  Give them pencils to colour and draw with try to encourage them to use the correct tripod grasp.

Keep your child’s brain alive by asking them simple mental maths questions such as doubling and halving numbers, counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.  Ask them to say one more or less up to 100! Talk about odd and even numbers and play lots of memory matching games.  Teach them the Phonetic Alphabet e.g. a=alpha, b=bravo, c=charlie etc. and have some fun with it!  If you’re out and about, ask them to read vehicle registrations using the Phonetic Alphabet, it’s really good fun!

If your child can use an iPad or iPhone, instead of playing games, find some learning tools such as ‘topmarks’ for maths and http://www.abcya.com for maths and phonics.  We use many reading schemes in school but ‘Letters and Sounds’ have great games for children. To help improve your child’s keyboard skills please visit //mousepractice.altervista.com.  Children use this website regularly and are very familiar with it.  These are all free resources and children love doing them as they think they are playing!

I hope you find this useful.  Enjoy your summer and we look forward to seeing you in September.

Patrice Pritchard.
Head of Early Years