SUPPLEMENT YOUR CHILD’S EDUCATION.. Don’t know where to start?

What’s your Aim? HAVE fun? learn? follow a curriculum? Support your children to do better or improve?

“I never know where to start”

Asiya, Housewife in Leyland, Lancashire

As we’re off school for an extended time now, it’s nice to fill up the time with worksheet upon worksheet so the children are busy but I would suggest to stay away from that temptation and allow them (and you) to be a bit more creative.

Anything that you want can be found on the internet now- instructables, worksheets on every subject known to man, colouring or puzzle pages so it’s nice to have an aim in mind and search for something that serves two purposes – educational and creative or ‘develops memory’ and entertains for example https://www.twinkl.ae has many ready made resources and your children will appreciate the extra time you’ve spent.

For my 5yo son and 3yo daughter I always search for their current obsession (dolls or army!) and cross reference it with a resource, yesterday I found a ‘dot to dot’ for my son and a colouring page for my daughter.

My older girls need some practice in writing so I searched one of the tasks on the IELTS website; ‘What’s your opinion on Advertising;’ I then found two conflicting opinions and told them to read them and write a summary, then they had to give their opinion. The actual word content was only 250 words but it was a nice exercise in scanning a resource and reading it to paraphrase and use it as evidence.

My 10yo is falling behind in Maths so I found a KS2 practice paper for him to solve to find out which concepts he was weaker on so I can focus on them more in the coming days. This way I found out his arithmetic is good but he needs help on figuring out sequences and patterns, so I can develop that skill with the work I choose today.