WHAT PARENTS CAN DO TO HELP THEIR CHILDREN LEARN

• Read to your baby, read to your child – as often as you can. • Look at books together. Talk about the cover, the title and the pictures, turn the pages together, answer your child’s questions. • Visit the library. • Make a book – help children to cut out magazine pictures and make up a story. • Talk about what’s in the family photo album. • Read signs, labels, instructions, and TV listings. • Encourage your child to learn his name. • Draw in the sand, misted-up windows, with chalk – anywhere (except the walls!). • Make letters out of stones, blocks, buttons, and shells – anything. • Make a name sign for your child’s bedroom door. • Let your child help you to write a shopping list. • Display your child’s work – be proud of it. • If your child is interested, say the letters in his name show him how the letters are formed, write a story under his drawing. • Count together. Count fingers, toes, buttons, groceries. • Sing counting songs. • Point out and talk about numbers on letter-boxes, number plates, signs, the TV remote control, sports clothing. • Encourage your child to sort the groceries or the cutlery, help you measure food during cooking, set the table. • Sort toys into groups, clothes into piles, match socks. • At the playground talk about up and down, inside and outside, tall and short, fast and slow, far and near. • Point out patterns on pedestrian crossings, quilts, wallpaper and in nature. • Use math’s language: “Bring me two onions. Find a bigger shoe. Let’s dance in a circle.” • Show your child that you read, write and use numbers. • Share books and magazines, whether it’s motoring, fishing, gardening, fashion or food. • Play number games with your child, egg bingo, snakes and ladders. • For younger infants and toddlers, finger play and action songs are important, egg “This Little Piggy went to Market”. • Play games that involve specific directions, e.g. Simon Says. • Turn off the TV, PlayStation, and computer and go for an adventure together. Kick a ball around at the park; draw in the wet sand at the beach. Have fun and talk about everything you see together.