Learning Specialists
The students at Miners Rest Primary School have all worked exceptionally hard to extend their literacy and numeracy knowledge and skills across Term Two. We would also like to acknowledge the staff who have nurtured, challenged and developed each student to their full potential, and the parent community who have supported their child/ren in their learning journey. We are very proud to work in such a special learning community.
With the end of Term Two fast approaching, we would like to wish everyone a safe and happy school holiday break. Here are some suggestions for school holiday activities which link in literacy and numeracy:
- Audiobooks
Children can find themselves captivated by a narrated story. Music and sound effects are also part of the production and make listening to an audiobook a truly immersive experience. Even though it’s not technically reading, audiobooks support reading and literacy skills by building vocabulary and modelling fluency.
Audiobooks are fantastic for long car rides to holiday destinations or to use when your little ones need to wind down at bedtime. Let their minds wander through the wardrobe and into the land of Narnia with stories of C.S Lewis, or imagine themselves climbing the treehouse, higher and higher, to inhabit the ‘stories’ of Andy Griffiths. Older children can wander the wild plains of Africa listening to stories by Paul Theroux while they walk the dog.
Audiobooks can be accessed via a number of streaming services like Audible and Spotify, and most e-readers have audio functions. Your local library is likely to have an audio borrowing system too, so speak to your librarian.
- Keep a journal of their holiday
If you’re travelling during the school holidays, encourage your child to keep a journal of their trip away. This is a great way to get them to pay close attention to their surroundings and see things in a different way. They can write about what they did each day - what they find exciting about this new place and what daily adventures they went on. They can also stick in mementos and draw some of the interesting things they’ve seen. If you’re staying home for the school holidays, create a neighbourhood or nature scavenger hunt for your child to go on. For example, take a photo of a postbox or find a crunchy leaf that’s fallen from a tree. They can write about their adventure in their journal and stick in their mementos.
- Play the license plate game!
This is an all-time favourite – there are so many variants to play it, your children will never get bored in the car again! This is a great game as you can adapt the game to your child’s math level.
While driving, children have to spot on license plates each number from 0 to any pre-determined number in order (e.g. 0-10 for younger kids, 0-999 for older kids).
Children can also find which numbers are odd and which ones are even. As an extension, they can point out which ones are prime numbers.
Another way to play is for kids to try to make up the largest number from a license plate by rearranging the numbers. According to math level, children can add, subtract, multiply, or divide all numbers in a license plate.
For an extra challenge, ask children to use the numbers in a license plate to make the number 24 by using any combination of the orders of operation.
- Making Sense of Time
Making up a schedule for the day which includes the start and end time for each activity.
Ask your children to predict how long routine activities will take, such as a walk to the park, a drive to the local shops, etc.
