Literacy

To give meaning to marks when drawing and painting (more meaningful and purposeful).

• When your child would like to do some mark making ask them, “What are you going to draw? Or “What are you going to write?” Once they have completed their picture, encourage them to talk about the marks they have made. Are the marks what they said they were going to draw/write about?
• Do some painting with your child based on their interests and see if they can talk about the marks they have made. Support them to use the paintbrush like they would a pencil.
• Make a card or picture for someone. Encourage your child to draw a picture and write a message for their card. The writing will be marks or lines on the paper rather than any correctly formed letters or words.
• Model how to draw simple pictures like a person. Draw a circle for the head and an oval for the body etc… Talk about the shapes you are using as you are drawing. You can also use some of the step by step drawing guides to help your child draw some simple pictures. These have been listed below.  

Reading

To join in with familiar stories and rhymes and to say what might happen next.

• Read stories with your child that include lots of repeated refrains. Encourage them to join in with the repeated phrases. Some good examples have been listed below:
  • The Three Little Pigs
  • The Three Billy Goats Gruff
  • Goldilocks and The Three Bears
  • Dear Zoo
  • We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
  • Room on the Broom
• Sing your child’s favourite nursery rhymes and encourage them to join in. Play your turn my turn - start a nursery rhyme, then stop part way through and encourage your child to finish it off.
• Stop reading a story part way through and ask your child to think about what might happen next. If they are finding this challenging, you can model doing it first or encourage them to use the illustrations to help them.
• Make your own lollipop stick puppets for the story you have been reading. Your child can then retell the story using the stick puppets. To add more fun, try putting on different voices when saying the repeated refrains for different characters. For example, a troll could have a really deep voice.

Maths

To know that numbers identify how many objects are in a set.

• Complete some of the activities from the sheets below.
• If you use the Ice Cream sheet, only go up to number 5. 

Topic

Please look at the document, 'Additional activities to support your child's learning in 30-50 months' and the new document 'Summer 2 parent support activities 30-50 months' for more ideas how to support your child in the different areas of learning. Any links in bold in the new document can be found in the rainbow dated 1.06.20.