All children want parental approval; some even crave it. When helping your child with homework, it can sometimes test the most patient of parents and appearing disapproving of your child’s efforts can sometimes create a vicious circle where homework becomes a bind rather than a great opportunity to connect.
Conceptually, children’s understanding can be reinforced by concrete examples illustrating an idea. For example, a dice or a sugar cube physically illustrates the concept of a cube as a 3D shape. Once a 3D concrete example has been used, a 2D visual representation of the concept or idea reinforces understanding further. For example, a diagram illustrating the different parts of a flower – labelling petals, the stem, stalk etc – might follow from children handling flowers. Finally, abstract thinking about the concept through questioning and discussion – eg. How many corners does a cube have? Or, what is the function of a flower’s stem? – encourages children to manipulate existing knowledge achieving higher order thinking.
We hope these tips and ideas will help you to support your child’s learning in enjoyable and fun ways.
Games
Playing games is a great way of learning. We’ve chosen links to some safe websites that host games that we think are well made and will get your children thinking about lots of different things.
We’d love to hear your feedback about the links we’ve included. If you have any suggestions for good online games that make children think, do let us know.
Try some games from one of these places:
Useful Links
Here are some more links to websites that we think might be of interest. Some will help your child with their homework, some will give them ideas for projects and we hope all will get them thinking. If you know of other websites that you think help develop better knowledge and understanding of the world, please do let us know.
BBC Bitesize – make sure to choose the right level
Information about keeping safe online
Khan Academy – interactive maths
