Helping your child at home

This is where we will provide an archive of great websites for you to access with your child at home to support with their learning at home.

Remember: every moment is a learning opportunity!

As a parent or carer you can help us personalise your child’s learning by:

Liaising with school, using the home school diaries, email, meetings and phone calls, letting school know about your child’s range of experiences, new interests or developments in their learning;
Working on the same learning that we are doing in school, at home - use our termly curriculum newsletters and home learning challenges to support you with this.
Looking at the things your child is learning at school and helping your child to experience it in a different way e.g. if they are learning about numbers at school – then at home, looking at the numbers on doors/cars/price labels/costs etc
Providing activities that will contextualize learning at home and school and will enable learners to develop lifelong skills, e.g. writing the shopping list, (or arranging/choosing the symbols or pictures) going to the shops, finding the items, carrying them home and putting them away and later using them to help cook dinner.

For our younger learners:

Encourage language and communication through play; talk about what you and your child are doing, “putting the man in the car, taking the man out of the car, finding the blue car,” etc. Extending what they are communicating e.g. “Car” “Blue car” “Big blue car” “Big blue car with a man in.” etc. adding a word/sign/symbol onto the sentence.
Encourage the use of their imagination in play.
Provide access to sensory and messy play activities.
Talk to your child about the environment around them; and helping them to experience it e.g. moving through the long grass, letting them investigate things around them.
Read to your child as often as you can.
Develop independence through: doing jobs, allowing time to do things for themselves, helping with cooking and shopping, having a responsibility on trips and outings.
Encourage the development of self-care skills; brushing teeth, dressing, undressing, swimming, washing hands, using the toilet.
Get them to think by asking them questions; e.g. ‘What do you think might happen?’ ‘Which way do you think we should go?’ ‘Why do you think that happened?’ ‘What is happening?’ Getting them to work things out, think how things fit together, ‘what goes with what?’
For our older learners:

Encourage independence and life skills through: shopping, independent travel, telling the time, money management, developing home life skills, cooking.
Take time to share your child’s interests and allowing them to communicate about them.
Encourage learners to take responsibility for their belongings.
Read with your child.
Encourage the development of their thinking skills by asking them questions; e.g. What do you think might happen? Which way do you think we should go? Why do you think that happened? What is happening? Getting them to work things out, think how things fit together, what goes with what?
Support their understanding of situations and characters in films, stories or soap operas to enable them to ‘read’ things which they may misinterpret.
Support their communication through social networking and helping them to understand difficult situations which could occur.
Talk to your child about the technologies they use and the benefits and dangers of them. There is a supportive website at: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents 

For all of our learners:

Make use of the community facilities and going on trips e.g. Kew Gardens. Liaise with the school about suitable places to go, available schemes to join and activities to enjoy.
Explore different senses through activities such as; music and movement, tastes and smells, exploring different textures, massage, feeling and touching, messy play.
Give children as many sensory experiences as possible e.g. rolling on the grass.
Read to your child, playing music, sharing movements with your child.
Dedicate time to interacting on a 1-1 basis, following the child’s lead.
Follow therapy programmes supplied by therapists.
Making sure that the right equipment and personal preference toys and sensory objects come into school each day.
Ask your child’s teacher about any resources or equipment that may be able to be shared.