Cuddling letters

I know I've blogged about handwriting before, but I'm currently having trouble again with my 5 year old, who is getting her letters increasingly muddled as she learns how to spell longer and more complex words. It seems that when she only had to think about a simple 3 letter word, she could remember, most of the time, how to write the letters 'd', 'o' and 'g', but when the words get longer, she is focussing so intently on getting the letters in the right place in the word, she forgets which way round to write them!

I watched her write the word angel the other day, and anticipated that she would have problems with 'g', which has become a regular culprit. It would confuse her, I thought, to try and point out that the tail on the 'g' points to the left, so instead I told her that the 'g' likes to cuddle the 'n' in the word angel. It worked! Maybe the tail was a little too long, as it curled around the 'n', but at least it was the right way round.

So what about other letters? 'Y' and 'j', like 'g',  always cuddle the letter before. The 'c' in chat is friends with the 'h' and likes to have a chat so it's got it's mouth open, facing the 'h'. The 'k' of course, is kicking the 'i' in kite, and the 'p' has its back to the 'o' in hop. Of course, the danger is that kids will then remember this and try to write the 'p' with its back to the 'o' in pond, which won't work. But hopefully, once they've practised, and started to write their letters correctly again, they'll remember this and it will automatically translate to their other words.

You can come up with your own silly ideas, depending on which letters your child struggles with, and which word they are trying to write. If we make it fun, it should take the stress out of writing, which will encourage them to write and practice even more, ultimately helping our children to develop beautiful handwriting!

Charity begins at home....

.... and with teaching our children about it. One of the most important lessons we can teach our children is how we respond to suffering in others, and how we care for people we don't even know. It's very easy to give them a pound to put in the box on a non-uniform day in school to raise money for a charity that they won't even remember the name of tomorrow, but it's much harder to teach them what it means to need the help of that charity.

I've started volunteering with a local food bank recently - we give food parcels to local families who are in real need, and I've been thrilled with the response from parents at my daughter's school who have donated food for the project. I'm always amazed at how generous people are, and the fact that it's being left in the school porch, where the children pass through every day, will hopefully mean that the kids take note of this very practical way that we can help people in need, on our doorstep.

We're taking our children to India this summer and we've tried to talk to them about the poverty we'll see while we're there, and the fact that there will be children we will meet who don't have enough to eat either, or even any toys. This second thing seems to have caught their imagination and they've started coming up with ideas of small toys and gifts that we can take to give to children that we meet - pens, bouncy balls, balloons. While I'm not sure how much difference a bouncy ball will make to an Indian child living in poverty, I'm hoping that the act of giving and thinking of others will have an effect on our children that lasts until they are adults and can make a more significant difference, by how they chose to live their lives.

Getting letters dackwarbs

Many children get their letters and numbers backwards at some point, and this is perfectly normal, but as parents, we do worry about it. If your child is 7, 8 or even older and still getting (or starting to get) their 'b' and 'd' mixed up, don't despair - chances are they will get the hang of it eventually, but extra stress from you isn't necessarily going to help!

The most common confusion is over 'b' and 'd' but talking to parents and teachers it seems that children can struggle with most letters, and with their numbers too. It's hard to get 'o' wrong, but other regular culprits include 'g', 'j', 'p', 'z', 'h', and 's', and in the number family '2', '3', '5' and '7' can be tricky, as can remembering that twelve is written as '12', not '21'. So what we can do to help our children? Here's a list of tips:

• Gently correct your child when you see them make a mistake. Saying something like "This is the way we write the letter 'b'. Do you want to try?", can be much more effective than being too strict or worrying them.
• Use a try of sand or foam to trace the shapes of letters and numbers with your fingers. They can copy yours or do their own, but get them to focus on the letters and numbers they struggle with.
• When you're reading together, point out the letters they are finding difficult to write, and talk about them. The more they see the correct letter, the more likely they are to be able to identify their own mistakes because their writing will 'look wrong'.
• Play a tracing game on your hand where you close your eyes and ask your child to trace a letter on the palm of your hand. They will want to get it the right way round so that you can guess the right letter; then do it to them.
• Don't be afraid to talk to the class teacher if you are worried. Chances are they will be able to reassure you and give you some more tips to try at home.
• Lastly, don't stress about it too much. Your child may pick up on your worry and become reluctant to try and write, thereby making the problem worse.

Interestingly, I have read that some teachers find that it is the more able children in their classes who continue to get their letters the wrong way round. They seem to be focussing so much on getting their complex thoughts and ideas down on paper that the task on concentrating on the detail is forgotten, and getting their letters the right way round becomes unimportant when the creative juices are flowing!

Rhyme, but no reason?

The education secretary Michael Gove is set to announce plans later this week to make the teaching of English more rigorous in primary schools. While I have no problem with this in theory - we should indeed evaluate the education system on a regular basis to ensure that our children are getting the best possible education, I do have a problem with the idea that we should "start" to teach poetry "as young as the age of 5". Well, I don't know about you, but I was teaching poetry to my children before they could speak. And my parents did the same for me. As yours probably did too. So this is nothing new Mr Gove.

"Twinkle, twinkle little star"; "Baa, baa black sheep"; "Incy, wincy spider"; "Pat a cake, pat a cake" - are these not poems? My children could recite these and many more by the age of 3. I share poetry books with them at home; both traditional poems such as "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear and modern stories in rhyme like "The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson. Young children are able to predict the rhyme at the end of a line. Read them the words: "Poor Tyrannosaurus Drip tried hard to sing along, But the others yelled, 'You silly drip, you've got the words all...'" and wait for them to shout "Wrong!" (Julia Donaldson again, in "Tyrannosaurus Drip")

When mine started nursery they enjoyed the delights of Michael Rosen in fabulous books such as "Little Rabbit Foo Foo" and "We're Going on a Bear Hunt". They were encouraged to join in and came home quoting their favourite bits to me. At the age of three. When Christmas time came and they were starring in their first nativity play, they learned to sing the words of "Upsy Daisy Angel". Again they were both 3 years old.

So what I want to know is whether Michael Gove has spent any time with primary school age children recently, and actually asked them about their favourite rhymes, stories and poems. He might be surprised that parents and teachers are actually doing a pretty good job already of teaching poetry to children aged 5. And much younger.

What time is it?

My children love this question. "What time is it Mammy?" is a regular utterance in our house. Why they need to know the time, I'm not sure. They are only 5 and 7 after all, and during the school holidays we're all more relaxed about bedtimes and mealtimes, so it's even less important. With no school day to start or appointments to get to, we can chill out about the time. And yet they still like to know.

I encourage them to have a go themselves. My 5 year old can tell me the o'clock, and is starting to get to grips with half past. The 7 year old has got the hang of quarter past and quarter to, but when they asked me the time at twenty to eight the other evening, the discussion that followed got rather complicated. How is seven-forty the same as twenty to eight? Why, when the long hand is pointing to the eight, does that make forty minutes?  Or twenty minutes to something?

Part of the problem is, of course, the fact that we have different ways of saying the same thing. So half past three is the same as three-thirty; ten forty-five is a quarter to eleven; twelve o'clock is midday (or midnight if your children can stay up that late). The five year old happened to ask me, at midday today if it was morning or afternoon. She likes to make sure she hasn't missed a meal, so this is a common question; if it's afternoon she should have had her lunch. We were in the car at midday and so had to hurry home to eat! But was it morning or afternoon? Well, neither, at the exact moment she asked me. And that started another discussion about time.

With preschoolers, parents can help teach time by talking about times of the day, and the order in which we do things. "It's breakfast time now, then we'll get dressed and after that it's time to go to the toddler group." Think back over the day with your two or three year old and talk about what they've done, and the order that things happened in. This gets them understanding that time is sequential, and that there are certain times for certain activities. Make a clock with a paper plate, some hands cut out of cards and a split pin so you can move the hands around, and let them play around, looking at the numbers and beginning to show them the time on the hour. This will be great preparation for starting school and learning to tell the time. Talking about the past as well is as important as times of the day. When you were a baby; when I was a little girl; in the olden days (which is very subjective, as was brought home to me when we were watching Back to the Future a few weeks ago, a film guaranteed to cause confusion around time concepts, and my 7 year old asked me if it was made in the olden days? Yes, when I was your age!)

Show your child different types of clocks and watches. My watch has no numbers on the face, but my children still like to look at it and see if they can work out the time. Our alarm clock in the bedroom is digital and they know that this is a different type of clock, although understanding how the digital display relates to an analogue clock face is tricky. Making a sundial is a great, and very simple activity. Next time you spend a sunny day on the beach, put a stick in the sand and mark where the shadow falls, then keep coming back to it during the day and marking the hours, talking about the way the sun moves across the sky and the shadow moves.  "What's the time Mr Wolf?" is a game I remember from school. Play this with your children; as well as being great fun, they start to learn the language of telling the time. There's loads of online games to help kids with time telling too. One of my favourites is on the bbc bitesize page but there are lots more out there.

Once children have been at school for some time and can confidently count in ones, they will begin to learn to count in twos, tens, and then, importantly, in fives. This step is vital for advanced time telling later on, as when you can count in fives up to sixty, you can count round the clock and get to 10 past, 25 past or 55 minutes past. And then if you can subtract you can make the connection between knowing that there are sixty minutes in an hour, so 55 minutes past is 5 to the next hour. We don't do this calculation of course, every time we look at a clock. Experience and practice teaches us that when the long hand is pointing to the 11 on a clock face, it's five to the hour.

Learning to tell the time is difficult; children won't grasp it overnight, and it takes years to progress from playing with a home made paper plate clock to being able to confidently state that the time is twenty to eight from looking at a watch with no numbers. But we can help our kids by talking to them about time, playing games with them, and helping them to use clocks and watches themselves.

A smile as wide as a ...

At first glance, the note that my daughter brought out of school today seemed to say that this week they will be using smiles. How lovely. To spend all week using our smile would indeed make for a happy school. Smiling is infectious; try out a big wide grin on a stranger in the street (go on, I dare you) and see if they smile back. Well, they might think you're as mad as a hatter, or as silly as a sausage, or as daft as a brush... oh yes, it was similes, not smiles. My daughter's class will actually be using similes in their writing and speaking this week.

I wonder what they will come up with? Daddy is like a bear with a sore head in the mornings; Mammy is cuddly like a big soft cushion; my sister is as naughty as a monkey. Maybe I should have a chat with her before she goes into school in the morning...

Spend, spend, spend?

We've all got less money at the moment. But one of the last things that we cut from our household budgets is spending on our children. We would rather go without a new outfit for ourselves, or a night out with our partner, than see our children miss their swimming lessons because we can't afford them. And that's right - our kids do come first. But too often there is pressure on parents to spend money on so-called educational toys that will help them at school and be fun at the same time. So what I want to ask is this: Do we really need to spend money on toys and activities for our children to ensure they get the best learning environment at home?

In short, no. If you want to treat your kids, and you have a bit of spare cash, great, but don't feel that you are holding them back if you don't buy the latest electronic gadget that teaches them how to read, or improves their maths skills. There's so much we can do with a good old fashioned book, or a pencil and a piece of paper. Remember hangman? And how about battleships - the old school type that you have to draw yourself. Try making large number-dominoes for your little ones out of card from old cereal packets covered with paper, or stick a picture they have drawn onto card and cut it into a jigsaw. I remember having great fun making those telephone thingys with string and plastic cups, and using them with my sister. For more great home-made science toys, click here, and links to printable maths games can be found here.

There's loads more ideas on the internet, so next time you're tempted to spend some money on a toy or game to help with their learning, spend a few minutes first seeing if you can find something that you can make together and play together, all for free. What our children need more than anything else is time - yours, and all the money in the world can't buy that.

To keep or not to keep?

Since my children were old enough to hold a crayon, they have both loved to draw and make things. We have boxes and shelves in the kitchen devoted to stickers and paper and glue and paint and cardboard tubes and beads and (the bane of my life), glitter. And when they started nursery I eagerly awaited the latest creations that they came out with every Friday: Handprints, their first homemade Christmas decorations, Mothers' day cards; even the scribbles on scraps of paper were treasured. I made a wall of my kitchen into a display area for their crafts and rotated their pictures, carefully storing the old ones in boxes and replacing them on the noticeboard with the newest arrivals.

Well, this was the theory. In reality I did pretty well up until the eldest was about 4, keeping most of their paintings and drawings but sometimes relegating the scribbles to the bin after a few weeks. But today I found myself throwing away a fresh creation, straight from school, with no more than a cursory glance. (Behind my daughter's back, of course). And now I hear you cry out "No!!" and throw your arms up in horror. What a terrible parent I am, not to nurture my children's artistic talents and appreciate every small mark they make on paper. I have spoken to other parents who claim to have kept every single one of their 7 year old's pictures and cards and scribbles, but I simply can't.  When I think of the mountain of art they have produced I realise that if I had kept every piece I would be risking becoming one of the poor unfortunates on hoarders from hell.

I love the fact that my children love to draw, and paint, and stick, and glue, and make. I allow them to make a mess while they're doing it (and they're getting better at clearing up after themselves too). I understand that being allowed to get sticky and make and draw things is really good for them: For their imagination when they are convinced that they can turn an empty cereal packet, some yellow paint and 4 cardboard tubes into a lion cub; for their fine motor skills when they were first learning how to hold a pen and form shapes and letters; for their understanding of science experimentation as they discover what happens when you mix paint colours together; for their spatial awareness as they learn what size piece of paper they will need to cover a box; for their concentration and ability to see a task through to the end because they feel such a sense of achievement when their picture is completed; and for the development of their confidence and self-esteem when I really love what they have made.

So even when I surreptitiously crumple up the art and push it deep down into the bin where they can't find it because I know they'll never miss that one small piece of paper with a circle and two lines scrawled onto it, my children still know that I think their artwork is brilliant and that there'll always be the space and time in our house to get messy.

Spelling dice

So, we've had fun throwing our letters out of the window this week, running around the kitchen making 'o' and 'i' shapes with our fingers. It's grabbed the kids' imaginations and the apostrophes are in the right place, even if the remaining letters aren't!!

While preparing for a session with parents tomorrow I came up with a dice idea for reinforcing spelling too. By printing out a cube net and drawing or writing different words, letters and pictures on each side before sticking together, we can play all sorts of games with our children. I'm not sure how the parents tomorrow will react to my drawings of animals, designed to get nursery age children recognising and making animal sounds, and reception age children spelling cat, dog (it's hard to draw a recognisable dog!) and pig. But hopefully they'll get the idea. Children will enjoy making their own - giving them a letter on each face they can name a work that begins with each letter. As they progress to more complex sounds, write 'ch', 'sh' or 'th' on the faces and ask them for a word that begins or ends with these sounds as they roll the dice. Or, as I made for my kids, 'have not', ' did not' and 'do not'; the question being how do you spell the contraction, or shortened version of the words?

Here's a link to website that will let you print a cube net (and other 3D shapes too if you're interested) to make your dice. Have fun, and feel free to share your ideas about what you write on each face and how you get on!

Difficult questions

All children go through that stage where they ask questions that we don't even know how to begin to answer. I ended up having a confusing conversation with my two the other day about whether other people taste things differently. Like, what does cheese taste like to someone else? I don't know, I replied, what does it taste like to you?

Asking difficult questions is a natural part of growing up and discovering things about the world, but there comes a time when a lot of us stop asking those difficult questions, and start to concentrate instead on what we can easily do or find out about, dismissing such things as what colour is the smell of pizza, and focussing on how we solve a maths problem, or pass our driving test, or get through the next few days at work. This ability of children to ask the random, awkward questions, to think "outside the box" and to come up with creative answers to problems is a skill that we can encourage them to develop and one which will serve them well in the long run.

The education systems in other parts of the world have been applauded for their results in traditional, academic subjects. China, for example has been held up as an example of a country where the students achieve fantastic results in maths. But is this limited and structured system what we want for our children? Or do we in fact want to encourage them to be the creative, innovative thinkers of the future - to discover a cure for cancer, to solve the world's economic problems, or to design a new form of sustainable energy?

Encourage your child to keep asking these questions - often we cannot answer them, but by really listening to them, taking their questions seriously and talking through things with them, we are teaching them that asking questions is valuable, and that life is often about a continued search for answers, not a quick fix, or an instant google answer!

I can't guarantee that you will be able to produce the next Albert Einstein or Marie Curie, but as parents we can help our children to retain their enquiring minds, and not to feel embarrassed or self-conscious about wanting to know why the sky is blue or how gravity works in water, or whether cheese tastes the same to your sister as it does to you.

Throwing letters out of the window

Some people learn better when they are given a picture or an action - either a real one, or something in their head to visualise. It's worth remembering this when helping your children to learn something new, as the teacher in the classroom doesn't have time to help each and every child come up with their own strategies for learning, and if your child is one of these visual learners, helping him or her at home to come up with pictures and actions can really help them to remember things.

Take apostrophes. It's hard to remember when to use them, and something I use both with the adults I teach ESOL to, and with my own children, is the idea that when we squish two words together, some letters get pushed out, and as we don't need them any more, we can just throw them out of the window. I do actions to go with this too - I actually throw the letters towards the open window with one hand as I rub the letter out on the whiteboard with the other. I think my ESOL students have a quiet laugh at me behind my back at these antics, but there's no denying that it helps them to remember to put an apostrophe in place of the discarded letter or letters. For example, when we squish is and not together to make isn't, the 'o' is thrown out of the window and we put the apostrophe in its place.

My 7 year old has apostrophes in her spellings this week - I'll let you know how much fun we had throwing our letters out of the kitchen window.