Reading at home
Read and talk together
- Get your child to tell you about what they are reading. Who is their favourite character and why? Is there anyone like that in your family? What do they think is going to happen? What have they learnt from their reading? Does it remind them of any of their own experiences?
- Help your child with any words they don’t understand. Look them up together in an online dictionary if you need to.
- Read recipes, instructions, maps, diagrams, signs and text messages. It will help your child to understand that words can be organised in different ways on a page, depending on what it’s for.
- Read junk mail or look at online ads. Your child could compare costs, make their own ‘advertisements’ by cutting up junk mail or come up with clever sentences for a product they like.
Talk with your child while you are doing things together. Use the language that works best for you and your child.
Read with others
- If your child has chosen something to read that is too hard at the moment, take turns and read it together.
- Reading to younger brothers or sisters, whānau or grandparents will give your child an opportunity to practise reading out loud.
- Encourage other family and whānau members (Aunty, Grandma, Koro) to read to and with your child.
- Playing board games and video games is important, too.
- Choose games that everyone wants to play. Make them challenging and not too easy.
When they are reading, the most common difficulty your child is likely to have is working out the meaning of new words, phrases and expressions. To do this, your child will use their knowledge of words and word patterns (for example, prefixes, suffixes and root words) to help build meaning. You may need to remind your child to read back and forward for clues to help their understanding of what they are reading. Talk with your child about the meaning of new words.
Keep the magic of listening to a good story alive by reading either made-up, retold or read-aloud stories to your child – with lots of excitement using your voice!
Take your child to the library
- Help your child to choose a variety of books they want to read.
- Help them look for books about topics they’re learning about at school.
- Get your child to choose a book that you can read to them. Listening to you read helps them with their reading.
- Encourage your child to retell favourite stories or parts of stories in their own words.
Help your child link stories to their own life. Remind them about what they have done when a similar thing happens in the story.
Writing at home
Write for fun
- Writing about their heroes, sports events, tīpuna | ancestors, hobbies and interests helps your child to stay interested in what they are writing about.
- Help your child to leave messages in sand on the beach, send a message in a bottle, do code crackers, word puzzles, crosswords, word finds online – these are all fun to do together.
- Make up a story or think of a pakiwaitara | legend and act it out with costumes and music. Write down the names of the characters or tīpuna | ancestors.
- Using a digital device, encourage your child to write, email, message and publish or print for pleasure. This can include emails, birthday cards, poems, jokes, letters or pictures with captions.
Keep writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, any time.
Talk about your child's writing
- Get your child to talk about their writing and share it.
- Either physically or digitally cut out words and letters to make stories, codes, poems, puzzles and more.
- Play with words. Thinking of interesting words and discussing new ones can help increase the words your child uses when they write. Look words up in an online dictionary or talk with family and whānau to find out more about where the words come from.
Talk about what your child writes. Be interested. If you don’t understand what their story is about, ask them to tell you more about it. Use questions they will want to answer.
Write for a reason
- Get your child to help write the shopping list, invitation lists for family events, menus for special dinners, thank-you cards when someone does something nice.
- Postcards are a good size for a sentence or two and they are cheap to post, too.
- Have a special place to keep your child’s writing at home, for example, notice board, fridge or a folder. You might frame a piece of writing and hang it up, too.
Be a great role model. Show your child that you write for all sorts of reasons. Let them see you enjoying writing. Write to them sometimes, too. You can use your first language – this helps your child’s learning, too.
Maths at home
Talk together and have fun with numbers, shapes, games, and patterns
Help your child to:
- find and read large numbers in your environment for example, 9,000, 300 and 23
- count forwards and backwards starting with numbers like 1,098, 1,099, 1,100, 1,101 then back again
- make patterns when counting – forwards and backwards, starting with different numbers (73, 83, 93, 103… or 118, 108, 98, 88 and so on)
- find families of facts when multiplying and dividing with 3 and 4, for example, if your child knows 3 × 4 = 12, then they will also know that 4 × 3 = 12, 12 ÷ 4 = 3 and 12 ÷ 3 = 4
- estimate the size of objects using tools they have available, like the width of their hand or the length of their foot
- work out patterns – make codes from numbers
- notice the right angles and lines around you.
Be positive about maths and show your child where you use maths. This will help them build confidence in maths. Praise their effort.
Use easy, everyday activities
Involve your child in:
- making and organising lunch or a meal for a party or a hui, including equal sharing of fruit, biscuits, sandwiches, or drinks
- choosing items to weigh at the supermarket, for example, how many apples or bananas weigh a kilo? Look for the best buy between different makes of the same items, for example, blocks of cheese, or check on the amount of sugar or salt per serving
- telling the time to the nearest 5 minutes
- deciding how much money to pay the parking meter and what time you will need to be back before the meter expires
- remembering series of numbers, for example, thinking about how many phone numbers they can remember or talk about what they do to help them remember
- looking for numbers, shapes, measurements, graphs and other maths ideas when reading together
- using a map or app to plan a route to a new location
- looking at a weather forecast and talking about the chance of rain, sun and so on.
- wrapping up presents or packaging items to be posted.
Maths is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.
For wet afternoons, school holidays and weekends
Get together with your child and:
- play card and board games that use guessing and checking
- look at junk mail or online shops – which is the best value? Ask your child what they would buy if they had $10 or $100 or $1,000 to spend
- do complicated jigsaw puzzles
- cook or bake, then get them to select the appropriate measuring cups, spoons (½ and ¼ teaspoon) and scales to use
- collect boxes – undo and see if you can make them up again or make it into something else
- make paper darts and change the weight so that they fly differently, work out which is the best design
- create a repeating pattern, for example, kōwhaiwhai patterns, to fill up a page or decorate a card
- play maths ‘I Spy’ – something that is ½ a km away, something that has 5 parts hide something from each other and draw a map or hide several clues - can you follow the map or the clues and find it?
- do skipping ropes or elastics – how long will it take to jump 20 times?
- look at paper or online maps to find important locations, for example, where were you born or where does Nana live?
The way your child is learning to solve maths problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.
Download the year 4 resources
Reading and writing at home - Year 4 NZ Curriculum Maths at home - Year 4 NZ Curriculum 