Our focus stories
Many of our focus stories below (in the order we have read them) are available to watch and listen to on YouTube. Watch them with your child and ask them questions to check their understanding, encourage them to reply to your questions using full sentences.

Questions could include: What is the title of the story? Where is the story set? Who are the characters in the story? What happened at the beginning of the story? What happened next? What happened at the end of the story? Was it a happy or sad ending? Why? Did you like the story? Why? / Why not?

Ask you child more specific questions relating to the story and see if they can retell the story too. Perhaps they could think of a different ending to the story. They could draw a picture of their ending and/or write about it!

Other things to do to help your child:

• Read stories- don't forget to discuss the story with your child afterwards to check they have listened, ask them questions about the story to check they have understood it. You could also ask them to predict what will happen and ask if they liked the story and why they liked or didn't like it. Begin with "What" questions and if your child finds this easy move on to "How" and "Why" questions to help them develop more detailed responses and ideas.

• To support children to gain strength in their hands in order to write encourage your child to do lots of mark making, threading beads, play dough and to construct using materials such as Lego. Any activities that will get their arms, wrists, hands and fingers really moving!

• Encourage your child to practise writing their name, remember only the first letter should be a capital letter.

• Support your child to form their letters correctly -see the picture below to show you how the letters should be formed and the rhymes we say to remind children how to form them as they write.

• Sing songs and rhymes with your child.

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• Spend time talking to your child e.g. if you go for a walk, talk about the things you see such as cars, houses and trees.  Ask them questions about those things too.

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To support the children to learn new vocabulary and internalise the story of ‘The Little Red Hen’, they learnt actions to go with the story. Here they are reciting the words and performing the actions to go with the story: