Reading at home

Make reading fun

Reading at home should be fun and easy. It should be something you both look forward to and a time for laughter and talk.

• Share the reading, take turns, or see whether your child wants to read or be read to today.
• All children like to be read to, so keep reading to them. You can read in your first language.
• Visit the library together and help them choose books to share.
• Read messages from family or whānau aloud.
• Play games together and discuss any unfamiliar words that come up during them.

Talk about reading

• Talk about pictures in books.
• Sing waiata and songs, read poems, say nursery rhymes, and make up rhymes together (the funnier the better).
• Be a role model. Let your child see you enjoying reading and talk about what you are reading.
• Talk about content that you both might read or watch or that your child reads and watches, ask about characters personalities, storylines, and events.
• Point out words on signs, shops, and labels.
• Play word games like ‘I spy’ and ‘Simon says’.

Make it a special time together

Reading is a great chance for you and your child to spend special time together. Make reading:

• quiet and relaxing
• a time to sit close to your child
• interruption-free for 10 to 15 minutes
• an enjoyable, interesting, and special time
• a time to praise your child for making an effort.

Help your child to link stories to their own life. Remind them about what they have done when a similar thing happens in the story.

Writing at home

Make writing fun

• Help your child write an alphabet letter, then go letter hunting in your house or in a book to find that letter.
• Let your child see you writing – you can use your first language.
• Encourage them to write shopping lists or make birthday cards.
• Water and a paintbrush on a dry path or a stick in the sand are fun ways to write letters and words.
• Support the learning of letters and sounds using appropriate apps.

Give them reasons to write

• Write to each other. Write notes to your child and leave them in interesting places, like their lunch box. Ask them to write a reply.
• Help them message family, whānau or friends.
• Work with them to put labels on special things – like the door to their room or their toy box.

Talk about their writing

• Talk about the letters in your child’s name and where the name comes from.
• Help them create a scrapbook with pictures. Encourage them to write stories under the pictures and talk to you about them.
• Ask them to write about pictures they draw on paper or on a device. Or get them to tell you the story and you write or type it under the picture.

Encourage writing

• Have felt pens, pencils, crayons, paper, or a device available.
• Use milk bottle tops with letters on them to create words.
• Put magnetic letters on the fridge and ask what words they can make with the letters.

Maths at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers, shapes, games, and patterns

Maths is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child. You can help your child to:

• find numbers and shapes around your home and neighbourhood, for example, clocks, letterboxes and signs
• count forwards and backwards starting with different numbers, for example, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, then back again – use clocks, fingers and toes, letterboxes, action rhymes
• copy, continue and make patterns when counting, for example, ‘clap 1, stamp 2, clap 3, stamp 4, clap 5 …’
• do sums using objects such as stones or marbles, for example, 6 + 2, 4 + 4 and 5 + 3
• make up number stories, for example ‘You have 2 brothers and 2 sisters. There are 4 of them’.
• compare objects side by side (shorter and longer, shorter and taller, lighter and heavier, or holds less and holds more)
• connect days of the week to activities on those days
• connect time of the day to activities at that time (we go to school at 8 am, we go to bed at 8 pm)
• build with blocks and talk about the features
• sort objects by feature, for example, find all the yellow socks
• make predictions about what might happen in a story or a game.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• preparing and sharing out food, for example, ‘We have eight carrots’. Ask, ‘How can we share them between us?’
• talking about time, for example, ‘lunchtime’, ‘story time’, ‘bedtime’
• using words in everyday play, such as ‘under’, ‘over’, ‘between’, ‘around’, ‘behind’, ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘heavy’, ‘light’, ‘round’, ‘circle’, ‘yesterday’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘left’, and ‘right’. You can get books, games, movies or find online content with these words and ideas in them too
• asking questions such as ‘How many apples do we need for lunches? What do you think the weather is going to be like today or tomorrow? What are we going to do next?’
• organising books or toys on a shelf from tallest to shortest.

For wet afternoons, school holidays and weekends

Get together with your child and:

• play with water using different shaped containers and measuring cups in the sink or bath
• bake and talk to your child about the recipe and ingredients using words like ‘how many?’ ‘how much?’ ‘more’. Count how many teaspoons of baking soda are needed, how many cups of flour, how many muffin cases
• play dress-ups and getting dressed, use words like ‘short’, ‘long’, and ask questions like ‘what goes on first?’, ‘what goes on next?’, ‘does it fit?’
• create a ‘sorting box’ with ‘treasure’, for example, bottle tops, shells, stones, poi, toys, acorns, pounamu (greenstone), cardboard shapes, leaves. Ask questions like ‘how many?’, ‘which is the biggest group?’, ‘which is the smallest?’, ‘how many for each of us?’, ‘what shape are those?’
• do jigsaw puzzles, play cards or board games and build with blocks.

Download the year 1 resources