Resources to Support Fine Motor Skills
Resources to Support Gross Motor Skills
Fizzy Programme
Movements to support gross motor skills
Animal movements to support gross motor skills
Help with gross motor skills
Resources to Support Reading
Three ways to support reading at home
Audiobooks
You could put these on in the car or when you are cooking dinner and share the stories together. It is a great way to develop a love of stories and books without having to read words on a page. It allows the child’s (and your) imagination to run wild and you can discuss the story with them.
Try Audible by amazon - https://tinyurl.com/2ur2afde
Try Audible by amazon - https://tinyurl.com/2ur2afde
If you have a CD player you can still buy lots of stories second hand or brand new on CD.
Echo reading
Echo reading is a rereading strategy designed to help students develop expressive, fluent reading. In echo reading, the adult or confident reader reads a short segment of text, sometimes a sentence or short paragraph, and the student will echo it back.
To help learners focus on their reading fluency, various aspects of reading aloud have been separated into six key elements. Each aspect works in partnership with the others to produce a rich and vibrant reading performance:
Pitch: The musicality of the reading voice – including tone and intonation.
Power: The strength given to the reading voice – including volume and stress.
Pace: The speed and rhythm at which we read.
Punctuation: The adherence to and understanding of the marks an author has placed upon the page.
Pause: The knowing of when not to read and for how long.
Passion: The emotion of the reading – including empathy and sympathy and the development of a reader’s love for the written word.
Read alternate pages
Try reading a page and then letting them read the next page. Or you take it in turns to read each paragraph. This breaks it down for the children but also helps them keep pace when reading enabling them to follow along wit the story.
Resources to Support Speech and Language
How can you support speech development in 4-6 year olds?
- Pay attention when your child talks to you.
- Get your child's attention before you talk.
- Praise your child when she tells you something. Show that you understand her words.
- Pause after speaking. This gives your child a chance to respond.
- Keep helping your child learn new words. Say a new word, and tell him what it means, or use it in a way that helps him understand. For example, you can use the word "vehicle" instead of "car." You can say, "I think I will drive the vehicle to the store. I am too tired to walk."
- Talk about where things are, using words like "first," "middle," and "last" or "right" and "left." Talk about opposites like "up" and "down" or "on" and "off."
- Work on groups of items, or categories. Find the thing that does not belong in a group. For example, "A shoe does not go with an apple and an orange because you can't eat it. It is not round. It is not a fruit."
- Help your child follow two- and three-step directions. Use words like, "Go to your room, and bring me your book."
- Ask your child to give directions. Follow his directions as he tells you how to build a tower of blocks.
- Play games with your child such as "house." Let her be the parent, and you pretend to be the child. Talk about the different rooms and furniture in the house.
- Watch films together on TV or a tablet. Talk about what your child is watching. Have her guess what might happen next. Talk about the characters. Are they happy or sad? Ask her to tell you what happened in the story. Act out a scene together, or make up a different ending.
- Use everyday tasks to learn language. For example, talk about the foods on the menu and their colour, texture, and taste when in the kitchen. Talk about where to put things. Ask her to put the napkin on the table, in your lap, or under the spoon. Talk about who the napkin belongs to. Say, "It is my napkin." "It is Daddy's." "It is Tamara's."
- Go to the supermarket together. Talk about what you will buy, how many things you need, and what you will make. Talk about sizes, shapes, and weight.
Links to Further Information
