How to Help your Child with the Wider Curriculum

There are so many ways that you can support your child’s understanding and development across the whole curriculum. We know how important it is for children to learn to read, spell and calculate, but we also know it is fundamental to their overall development to become well-informed and healthy citizens. Here are some ideas for how to help with your child’s wider development.

Day Trips

Trips out to museums, historical sites, art galleries, the woods and the seaside are all hugely valuable. Not only do you increase your child’s understanding of the world, this valuable family time together also helps to support your child’s language skills (whilst you discuss what you can see, hear, smell and touch as well as the specialist vocabulary linked to that subject area) and their sense of self-esteem (knowing that you want to spend time with them). If you want to, you can also make something when you get home to remind your child of their experiences – make a collage, paint a picture or record themselves recounting their experiences on a video.

Sport

We all know that getting lots of exercise is important to stay both physically and mentally healthy. Anything that gets your child moving more is beneficial to their development. This may be an organised activity or team sport, or it may be going out for a jog or long walk together or going for a bike ride. All of this is valuable and helps your child to develop strength, stamina and balance.

Reading Widely

It’s just as important to read non-fiction as it is to read fiction. Go to the library and see if you can find some non-fiction books that link in with your child’s current Immersive Learning topic. Children love being able to come into school and teach everyone else some new facts they’ve learned at home. Teachers love this too as the children are then able to add to and develop their own interests linked to the class context. Reading doesn’t have to be in a book, though. Magazines, newspapers, websites and the written word in our environment such as restaurant menus and road signs all give your child the chance to practise their reading.

Arts and Crafts

Almost all children love to make things and get creative. You don’t need this to be particularly structured; in fact, sometimes the more freedom the children have, the better. We all have an innate sense of creativity and we just need the time and tools to make something interesting and beautiful. It’s useful to have a box of different types of paper and collage materials, as well as some PVA glue, ready to use at home, particularly for rainy days. You can pick up poster paint, brushes and paper cheaply at pound shops too, so your child can get messy and creative without it costing much.

Music

If you are able, going to a concert is an amazing experience for your child. It doesn’t matter what kind of music it is; in fact, the wider the variety the better as your child will pick up different elements of pitch, tone and rhythm from different musical genres. Having something simple at home to play is great too, such as a xylophone, a tambourine or a shaker. If you listen to music at home, try mixing up the genres there too. Why not try classical or jazz as well as more modern artists?