Top Tips

Prepare your child for nursery each day

Speaking to your child about the things they’re going to be doing at nursery can help them get involved and look forward to their day.  It’s a good idea to get them thinking about what’s to come.  It gives them a chance to prepare and get used to the routine and structure that nursery provides.  This can also help to prepare your child for starting school and following a more strict timetable. 

Read together

Literacy is a fundamental part of education and reading to your child on a daily basis greatly helps your child in all areas of learning.

Showing your child the pictures of a book and turning the pages is a great opportunity to bond with your child, while also enhancing their awareness and understanding of books. 

Reading is also a good chance to wind down and relax in between other activities.

Replicate nursery activities

Repeating activities or tasks that your child has carried out at nursery can help to reinforce the things they have learned.

It also gives you an opportunity to bond and be involved in the activities taking place at nursery.

You get the chance to learn directly from your child, what they have enjoyed and things they might like to do more of. 

Children are supported to develop personal, social and emotional skills at nursery.  At home, this can be as simple as teaching your child to share sweets with other family members and take turns with others.

Children practice personal hygiene at nursery such as hand washing.  Children develop social skills at nursery such as empathy which parents can teach their child about by talking to their child about other family members’ feelings.

Keep physically active

Physical activity is a great way to keep a healthy body and mind.  Children should ideally engage in some form of exercise every day.

Physical activity builds strong bones and muscles, helps to control weight and improves mood and sleep quality.

Children can develop gross motor skills.  This can be done by helping them develop balance, coordination and using movement like running, jumping, hopping and skipping.

You can go for a walk with your child, let them run around the garden or park, practice baby yoga and play physical games e.g playing with a ball.

Children can also develop fine motor skills. They can do this by learning to hold and use small tools like pens, pencils, paintbrushes, knives, forks, spoons, scissors etc.

Sing and dance

Music is good for the soul and this applies to children too.  Nursery rhymes are really good for this as they have lots of action and every parent knows one or two nursery rhymes by heart.  The is also great to develop vocabulary and understanding of rhyme.

Listen to a family-friendly playlist and try a song and dance routine with your child.  Not only will this be great fun for all the family but it can also be good exercise too.

You can also use everyday items, e.g. saucepans, to create musical instruments.

Imaginative play

Imaginative play is a great way to get children to express their creativity and have a certain level of autonomy over their play time.  Role playing is a common activity at nursery which you can encourage at home.

Give your child a doll and they will often take on the role of parent for the child by pretending to feed the ‘baby’ or change their nappy.

You could use soft toys to set up a zoo or host a teddy bear’s picnic.

To boost a child’s numeracy skills, you could set up a shop with tins and packets from your cupboard and writing out a price tag for each. Use spare change and a pot so children can count any money handed to them and (if they are a little older) they can try to work out how much change they must give back. You can get the whole family involved as customers.

Once these scenes are set, leave it out for your child who will love to go back again and again to play with it.

Cook together

Cooking engages all of the senses – seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting.

Cooking with young children provides them with fabulous sensory input and is really important for brain development.  Cooking with your child can be lots of fun and relatively stress free with a little preparation.

• Choose a time when your child is not overly tired. First thing in the morning or after naptime works well, if they are younger.

• Help your child feel the ingredients with their hands. You can measure the ingredients needed for the recipe. This way they are learning measuring and numeracy.

• Children love to mix and stir so be sure to include mixing and stirring in the cooking experience.

• There will be a mess, but this is part of the process too. Get them to help you to clean up.

Try gardening

If you’re lucky enough to have your own garden space, let your child do some digging and planting.  You could create a part of the garden which is just for them to create a mud kitchen.

For rainy days or if you don’t have access to a garden, consider growing your own herbs like cress and indoor salad.  There are plenty of websites for you to look at for this.

Take inspiration from nature and the world around them

Remember that learning isn’t just about structured teachings in the classroom, there are opportunities to learn every day.  

You can take a walk outside.  Draw inspiration from anywhere, such as walking past a muddy puddle or pointing out a spider in the house.

Use the internet to look for unusual animals or sea life.  Talk to your child about the creature and use their imagination to recreate the animal or create their own mystical animal using paints, crayons, plasticine etc.  

Carrying out all these activities with your child can help them become more independent and grow in confidence as well as enabling you to have lots of fun at home.

Taken from here.

For more ideas click here.