How to help your child at home, so they are ready for Nursery

Here are lots of ways you can support your child, so they are ready to join us in EYFS for their Nursery year:

• Share books every day! Help your child understand how books work eg. the way to hold the book, how to turn the pages, look/read the left-hand page and then the right, that print carries meaning (you read are reading the words on the page), pictures help us to understand what is happening. 
• Sing songs and nursery rhymes - how many do they know?
• Play Simon Says to develop listening and attention skills and follow directions. 
• Listen and follow simple instructions eg. wash your hands, tidy your toys
• Talk together - spend time chatting, taking turns to speak and listen, respond to and asking questions. 
• Play with your child, encourage them to talk about what they are doing and make links between their play and real-life experiences. Within this play develop and extend their vocabulary by naming things and grouping things by association eg. farm animals - cow - calf - moo - milk.
• Play memory and matching games. Can they remember where it is? 
• Play games to understand how to share, take turns and to lose as well as win. 
• Talk about their emotions. This helps them recognise and understand how they are feeling and how to react to others. 
• Be active, walking, running, hopping, skipping, jumping, practise riding bikes and scooters. 
• Practise dressing and undressing, in particular items of clothing such as putting on shoes, jumpers, coats. 
• Practise mark making - explore different marks on paper using pencils, pens, crayons, felt pens, paint. Take their tool for a walk, what marks can they make? eg. squiggles, scribbles, dots, dashes, swirls, zigzags, wavy lines, straight lines, wiggly lines, colouring etc. 
• Sing number songs as a fun way to practice counting and reciting numbers.