Reading

Reading aloud has many benefits. It greatly increases your child’s listening and speaking vocabulary, it shows the importance of reading and books, it prepares your child for reading and it also teaches the concepts of print.

Read to your child every day. Try some books that have more difficult vocabulary. Occasionally ask your child to predict what will happen next , before you turn the page.

Counting

When your child is counting objects, make sure that s/he understands the matching of the word to the object (one-to-one correspondence). Touching each object as s/he counts helps to learn this.

How high can your child count objects without missing numbers or objects?

Writing

Can your child print/write one or more sentences by himself/herself? If your child knows the letter sounds s/he can try to spell words. The teacher will have spoken about a capital letter at the start of a sentence and a full stop at the end, so you can remind him/her of this.

Playing

Playing card or board games can be very educational for your child. Choose games suitable to the knowledge of numbers and skills of your child. Keep the rules simple. Games teach taking turns and co-operation as well as number and game skills.

Encouragement

RaedingContinue to read aloud to your child. Even when children can read by themselves, it is important for them to hear a more fluent reader.

Have your child read aloud to you. If s/he makes mistakes or comes to words that are not known, just say the correct words so the reading can continue. If too many words are not known, the book is too difficult and your child may become frustrated.

It is better to read material that is too easy than too difficult as reading is meant to be fun.

Raeding

Encourage fluent reading with expression, as if the reader is telling a story.

Play word tennis games. Give a topic and then think of things that fit it, taking turns with items – a list of animals, things that are red, vegetables, countries, words that begin with a certain letter etc. This helps your child extend his/her thinking. It is also fun and everyone can join in.

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