Some great advice.
Schools across the country are set to close today and remain closed until March 29 amid coronavirus concerned.
Already I have had my son’s teacher message me to say that she will email out his school work for us to do at home with him.
Needless to say I’m a little bit nervous. The curriculum has changed a lot since I was in school (I’m looking at you jolly phonics) and I’ve never been great at math so I’m a bit worried that I won’t be able to help him with everything.
I know I’m not the only parent concerned about this which is why I breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted that Irish blogger and primary school teacher Sinead aka The Beautiful Truth had written some tips on how parents can help children with their schoolwork.
The popular blogger took to social media to share nine tips on how to help our kids keep up with their schoolwork and on behalf of parents across Ireland I say thank you.
Here’s are Sinead’s nine tips;
1) Don’t worry about progression on new topics. The best thing you can do is take out their maths book and go over old topics. Especially tables!!! Pick a topic every few days and print out a few worksheets for them to do. Revision is best here.
2) Join Mathlethics. This is a website packed full of maths games. Children can play against each other and work on all the skills that they will have already covered this year!!
3) Pick out the next 2 reading comprehensions in their English reader. Listen to them read. Get them to do the topics in a new copy for home. Have a read over it yourself when they’re done. Spend a week on each story.
4) Read, Read, Read. This is the best time for kids to read as much as they can. Pick a good book. Download a summery for yourself. Most books have book club type questions for each chapter online. Have a chat with the kids about the books.
5) If your children are older, there are some excellent websites for coding. I use scratch when coding with the kids. There’s loads and loads of tutorials online https://scratch.mit.edu
6) Twinkl are offering a free month to parents. This website is incredible. It is full of printable for everything from pre schoolers upwards. You will find so much here.
7) Pick a topic and get the kids to research and put together a project. This could be done the old fashioned way or using powerpoint or Prezi.
8) Scoilnet Primary is another website with a wealth of worksheets and topics for researching.
9) Take 20 mins the night before to have stuff ready. Write the list out and let them at it. Don’t over load them. As a teacher the maths would be the most important in my eyes. They can catch up on the rest. Keep them practicing their tables over and over!
I would have never known about any of these resources if Sinead hadn’t made this post and I’m so grateful to her. Yet another example of teachers being amazing.
