Having some basic skills before starting school will ensure that your child has a confident start to school. Here are some ideas for fun ways to learn at home.

Letters and Sounds

• Magnetic letters: ask your child to find all the same letter, starting with the letters in their name
• Find pictures in a book that all start with the same letter, for example,  all the P’s on the page
• Letter/word bingo
• Use a sand tray, playdough, or colourful pipe cleaners to shape the letters
• Experiment by changing the letter font on the computer
• Snap with flash cards
• I spy, for example, something beginning with ‘P’
• Alphabet frieze on the bedroom wall
• Puzzles
• Read lots of books
• Computer programmes: You Tube – Jolly Phonics; Alphabet songs; starfall.com.

Numbers

• Use a sand tray, playdough, or colourful pipe cleaners to shape the numbers
• Number bingo
• Magnetic numbers
• Flash cards
• Snap
• Numbers on letter boxes
• Phone numbers
• Counting steps
• Number frieze
• Hopscotch
• Puzzles
• Counting games, for example, how many white lollies can you see?
• Number rhymes – there were 10 in the bed, 10 fat sausages, and so on
• DVDs, books, and TV programmes (for example, Number Jacks).

Classroom Skills

• Developing fine motor skills:
• Holding a pencil
• Using scissors.

• Dressing themselves:
• Putting on a coat
• Shoe laces (if they will wear laced shoes to school)
• Dressing after swimming.