There are many ways in which you can help your child to settle into and enjoy school life and, in particular, their year in Junior Infants.
• Write their name on their coat, bags, books, lunch boxes, flasks, uniform etc.
• Teach your child how to take off and put on his/her coat, and how to open and close zips, buttons, buckles and laces.
• Show your child how to use and flush the toilet properly, and how to wash their hands properly.
• Encourage your child to share their toys and to tidy up after playing.
• Choose a lunch box and flask that are easily opened.
• Give some thought to lunches. Peeled oranges, for examples, are easier for your child to manage. Set yogurts may help to avoid spills.
• Talk with your child about how they are getting on in school.
• Do their sounds, words and reading when they start to bring them home.
• Encourage and reward good behaviour.
• Come to the meetings or workshops arranged by the school for parents.
• Talk with your child’s teacher if there is a problem or you are worried about something.
HELPING YOUR CHILD WITH READING
There are a number of things that you can do to help your child with reading and to reinforce work done in the Junior and Senior Infant classes.
• Talk with and listen to your child in order to build up their vocabulary and language abilities. Language is a pre-requisite for reading.
• Read to your child regularly. Let your child look at books, talk about the pictures and turn the pages. Ensure that reading is an enjoyable experience.
• Listen to your child practise the “sound book”; the faster their recognition of the sounds, the more fluent they will become at blending sounds to read words later.
• Words – when your child gets their words, practise them to build up their word recognition skills. This practice needs to be done regularly with your child. The following points will help with this practice.
1. Ask your child to pick out:
Conor Bunny likes
etc., one by one from the word box.
2. Look at the first letter in the word, ask your child what sound it makes.
3. Show them the words from the word-box and ask them to say them quickly (note any difficulties for the next practice session).
4. Get your child to construct simple sentences using their words (remember left to right orientation may not always be easy for them).
Conor likes Bunny
Len and Jen play
Jill likes the lollipop
The child reads the sentence they have constructed.
• Book – when your child starts to read their book, read it with them as often as you can.
1. Talk about the picture.
2. Look for new words on the page.
3. Ask your child to show you certain words.
4. Ask questions/talk about what you have read.
5. Sign your name in the appropriate place on the sheet on the inside cover of your child’s reader if a certain amount of pages has been allocated.
Always give plenty of praise, building of confidence is very important. Each session should only take 5 – 10 minutes. Constant drill of difficult words (i.e. show, say) will eventually bear fruit!
Above all enjoy reading with your child!
HELPING YOUR CHILD WITH MATHS
In Junior Infants your child will learn to:
• Sort and match e.g. all the cats, all the dogs together. The knives with forks. Cups with saucers.
• Count numbers and objects up to 10.
• Order numbers up to 7.
• Add two numbers up to 7.
• Measure time, weight, length.
• Recognise and use 1c, 2c, 5c.
• Recognise shapes, such as squares, triangles, circles, rectangles.
You can help your child in a number of ways. These include:
• Counting up to 10 and identifying and naming the written numerals.
• Counting objects such as buttons on coats, cups, plates, knives and forks.
• Looking for numbers on cars, buses.
• Making up stories to go with addition.
• Talk about money when shopping.
• Talk about time – what you do in the morning, afternoon, evening
• Practise writing numbers.
• Look for shapes in everyday objects.
