Home Learning

Below are suggestions of things that you may like to explore with your child to consolidate your child’s learning at school. Have a look in your child’s book and find out a possible focus area. Have conversations, write for your child, look for exciting and new ways to reinforce counting when you are driving, cooking etc.

The Home Learning book has lots of different sheets to help your children with their learning. Ideas for what to do are given at the front of the book. This book can stay at home to use and be brought to school when you want the teacher to check any extra learning you have been doing at home.

At home the main focus is for children to be reading the reader every night and practicing alphabet letter names, sounds and a corresponding word. Children also need to be practicing the ring words and finding these on the sheet glued in.

Pink ring words are the same as the balloon word sheet.

Red ring words are the same as the dolphin word sheet.

Yellow ring words are the same as the tree word sheet.

Blue ring words are the same as the helicopter word sheet.

Green ring words are the same as the cloud words.

When children have completed the green words there are no specific words to learn.

Poetry books will be sent home on a Monday to practice reading the poem at home during the week. This book needs to be returned to school on Friday.

If you have any questions feel free to come and see me.

Reading – readers will come home every night

• Read your reading book every night and fill in the reading log at the back of your book.

Spelling - this will begin when your child is at level 6 in reading (yellow level)

• Say/Read/Write and spelling words
• Recall these words instantly
• Find these words in other contexts
• Write sentences using these words
• Make flashcards of these words and continue to go over them.
• Do activities on the spelling octopus - in home learning book 

Poem

• Enjoy saying your poem together until words are familiar
• Try using a loud, clear voice and looking at the audience. 

Writing

• Revise all letters of the alphabet and the sounds.
• Word family –try rhyming some words eg man, can, ran pan, plan. 

Handwriting          

• Form upper and lower case letters correctly
• Use the correct pencil grip
• Practise writing all letters correctly
• Always start at the top of a letter
• Use the handwriting guide in Home Learning Books to write both names with correct letter formation.
• Practise numerals 0-9
• All Home Learning should be written neatly with letters formed correctly in pencil. 

Maths              

Focus on 1-100

• Count forwards and backwards.
• Know the number before and the number after.
• Put numbers in order.  23 45 67 96
• Read, write and say numbers and words for the numbers.
• Skip count in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.
• Learn addition and subtraction facts to 5, 10 and then 20.
• Consolidate family of facts: 2+3=5, 3+2=5, 5-2=3 and 5-3=2. These are two addition and two subtraction facts

Ideas for using your hundreds board at home

Addition and Subtraction

(1) Use the hundred chart as a number line to do addition and subtraction beyond what your child normally can handle. Take turns making up problems for each other to solve. Develop mental math skills by showing how to add or subtract the tens first (counting up or down) then the ones (counting left or right.)

(2) Look for addition and subtraction patterns. 3+9=? Now go to 23+9, 33+9, 63+9. What do you notice? What do 15-7, 25-7, 45-7, etc. have in common? Find other patterns.

(3) Count by whatever number you want, but start at an unusual place. Count by 5, starting at 18. Or count by 2, but start with 37. Or for a tougher challenge, practice your mental subtraction skills: count down by the number of your choice.

(4) Try some of these counting ideas with charts that start and end at other numbers.HelpingWithMath.com lets you create printable charts that start at whatever number you specify and count by whatever interval you like. You could make an even numbers chart, or a multiples of 3 chart, or . . . the possibilities are endless!

(5) How many numbers are there from 11 to 25? Are you sure? What does it mean to count from one number to another? When you count, do you include the first number, or the last one, or both, or neither? Talk about inclusive and exclusive counting, and then make up counting puzzles for each other.

Number and Pattern Activities

(6) Make picture puzzles: You give the clues — either a description of a number (“It’s two less than 26″) or an equation that equals that number — and your student colors in the appropriate square. Repeat to make a design (samples here, or try this cross-stitch heart). Now, let your student make up a puzzle for you to color.

(7) From Mathwire: Cut up a hundred board into irregular pieces to make a puzzle. For more of a challenge, cut a blank chart into puzzle pieces, writing in one or two numbers per piece. Can your student fill in the rest of the numbers? [Or use thisprintable puzzle worksheet. If you press the “Print” button, they will ask you for a member password (which costs money), but if you just use your browser’s print function, the page should print just fine. Refresh your screen to get a new set of numbers.]

(8) Play “Arrow Games”: Starting at the number given, each arrow means to move one square in the direction shown. What number is “45 ← ← ↑ → ↑”? How would you use arrows to say, “Start and 27 and move to 59″? Make up your own arrow code for someone to follow. Mathwire has a pdf version of this activity.

Hundred Chart Games

(9) Play “Race to 100.″ Take turns rolling one or two dice and moving that many spaces on the hundreds chart. If you correctly predict your landing place before you move (without counting squares!), then you can go one extra space as a bonus. The first person to reach or pass 100 wins the game

(10) Play a number bonds game. Take turns pointing to any number. The other player has to say how many more it takes to make 100.

(11) Play Five-in-a-Row, on a printed hundred chart. Use a wide-tip marker to make Xs and Os, or use pennies and nickels to mark the squares. On each turn, the player must make up a calculation that equals the number in the square they want to mark.