Helping develop your child’s enquiry skills at home can start with simple activities such as cooking.
Discussing ingredients and where they come from and how materials change when they are heated and cooled encourage children to ask questions and consider changes.
Open ended questions such as How, Where, What, Why and encouraging your child to give a reason for their answer rather than a 'yes' or 'no'.
Accelerate your child's language learning by using simple connecting rules e.g. 'un' gives a word the opposite meaning. Gradually go further e.g. 'bio' means life and 'logy' means the study of therefore biology is the study of life.
Help your child by using their senses. Put up posters around their bedroom, use brightly coloured pens make their surroundings a visual experience. Encourage them to listen to a variety of music and play background music whilst doing homework. Give opportunities to develop fine motor skills such as play dough or pottery.
The bathroom is a great Science laboratory. Try your own experiments with water-floating and sinking is great fun as is making a water wheel from a cork and four pieces of cardboard. Push in a pencil and hold under the tap!
Use your garden as an outside classroom. A wigwam is easy to make from bamboo poles and a sheet. Plant seeds such as cress, bean and tomatoes and watch them grow. Let your child have their own vegetable patch. Make a rain collector from a plastic bottle, investigate shadows and go on a bug hunt.
Share non-fiction books at bedtime not just stories. Discuss favourite animals and where they live.
Look on the internet to find facts and help with projects. Useful websites for family learning:
Remember encourage your child to be a detective and find out how and why, not just the answer!
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