Homework
Ways that you can help your child progress and learn.
‘Play allows children to communicate ideas, to understand others through social interaction, paving the way to build deeper understanding and more powerful relationships. Children play to make sense of the world around them, and to find meaning in an experience by connecting it to something already known.’
UNICEF
Children are learning all the time. The conversations and interactions that you have with your child will help them learn, grown and develop. At Hartburn we want children to become inquisitive, independent learners who at a very early age, develop resilience and a deep love for learning which continues for the rest of their life.
Early Learning Goals
In Reception we work against the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework. Below is a link to the framework.
The Early Learning Goals are where children should be by the end of Reception. Below is an overview of these goals.
Homework
In Reception children will be given phonics homework weekly, this will be assigned via Seesaw. Reception children will receive homework every Friday and it is expected to be complete by the following Thursday. When appropriate, children will be assigned topic based homework.
Children will be also be sent home 5 ‘tricky words’. Children are expected to learn these by sight as they are not decodable. There are many games that you can play with these such as:
- splat
- spin the bottle
- https://fiveminutemum.com/ has lots of creative ways to engage children
Reading
Every week your child will read with an adult in school. They will work on their word reading and comprehension skills, along with a range of other essential skills for reading. On this day, your child will take home 2 new reading books. These books should be read multiple times to build up fluency, accuracy and understanding. Our Jolly Phonics reading scheme is in place to help children become independent readers with confidence. They will also have an Oxford Reading Tree book, this is a book that they may need some help from an adult to read.
Below are some video examples of how to help children read at home.
Writing
At Hartburn children are expected to use Hartburn Handwriting from the beginning of their writing journey. Children will learn to write their name using school script and this will continue when they are writing independently.
In Early Years children are not expected to spell correctly and instead they are to use their phonetic knowledge to write words. The only words that we encourage children to spell correctly are ‘tricky words’.
At home there are many ways that you can encourage your child to write for a purpose. Here are just a few examples:
- writing a letter to a friend, relative, santa, etc.
- writing a shopping list
- keeping a diary of fun things that they do
- drawing and labelling a picture
- writing instructions (baking, making something, etc.)
- write their own story
- captions for photos (sentence)
Reinforce to your children that sentences need to contain capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.
Below are some useful documents to help with your child’s writing as well as some examples of children’s writing using their phonetic knowledge.
Maths
We use maths all the time in everyday life. Maths in Early Years is very practical and hands on, children begin their learning journey using real life object and scenarios. Once they have an understanding of this they will then begin to learn ways to record their mathematical thinking. Below is a list of things that you can do at home to help your child develop and master mathematical skills:
- board games (snakes and ladders, frustration, monopoly, mouse trap, etc.) anything using a dice, counting, sharing, turn taking
- jigsaws
- count different objects in groups of 2s, 5s and 10s (toys, sweets, plates, forks, etc.)
- dominos
- cards
- shape hunts
- learning when their birthday is
- order numbers. Can they splat 1 more than or 1 less than a given number?
- number rhymes (5 currant buns, 10 monkeys jumping on a bed, 5 speckled frogs, etc.)
- counting
- recognising numbers and shapes in their environment
and much much more!
Both in Nursery and Reception children will become familiar with Ten Town, they will each have a personal login. Please use the login provided by school to reinforce and encourage children to enjoy learning about numbers.
‘Children are often very good at counting out loud to 10 and even further, but it does not always follow that they can write the numbers correctly or that they understand the real value of each number. Ten Town is designed to help develop these basic numeracy skills.’
Ten Town
In Reception we follow White Rose Math’s scheme of work, below is a link to an app which can be downloaded and used at home. This has many games and resources for your children to use and enjoy and home.
Useful links
