Five Minute Mum: Time For School: Easy, fun five-minute games to support Reception and Key Stage 1 children through their first years at school

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So what do you do? Here’s what you do. You set up the activity while they are busy/asleep/out and then when ready you START TO PLAY YOURSELF. And when they approach you say casually, “Do you want to try/play too?” and once you’ve got their interest you start to explain what to do.

This game is called Silly Soup and anyone who has worked with children in EYFS will have played it or a version of it I’m sure. But no-one tells the parents!!! Except me. Ha. I’m blowing the top right off all those teacher secrets aren’t I?! 😉 Afterwards leave them to continue to play and mix while you put the kettle on. I made Florence her own potion tray too to play with while Ewan experimented. Maths is taken from Five Minute Mum: Time for School- the ultimate handbook to support your child through Early Years, Reception and KS1 - available from 15 April 2021.

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Tie string from somewhere high to somewhere low. I tied it to an upstairs window and to our slide in the garden below. Your letter of the day will almost certainly be different to mine, just do whatever aspects of it your little one enjoys. And the reason I don’t only teach Ewan the sounds the letters make but the names of the letter is because if I taught him the E in his name is an ‘Eh’ then it’s rather confusing that it makes a “U” sound in his name. So instead I always say its an “Eeee” because it is - no adult spells their name over the phone as ‘Duh, ah, ii, ssssssss, yuh’ so I don’t see why children shouldn’t know the proper letter names and then be taught that they can make lots of sounds right from the get go (but this is my own personal feeling!) after all, they all sing the bloody Alphabet song. An exclusive first look at Five Minute Mum: Time for School with the Maths chapter. It may not clear all those home school headaches, but it will make life easier- and a bit more fun too!

Name the ingredients magical names with your paper and pen. I had powdered flies, frog juice, witch brew, beetle eyes, golden wizard. Or if you really want to understand phonics clearly then I made this hour long video here which talks you through it all slowly (as I swig a gin!) I made this video during the pandemic when people couldn’t visit schools, like they usually would, to join a parents evening where this sort of thing is usually explained. It goes through the phonics phases reception class (first year of school) will usually cover in detail and explains all the terminology like blending and segmenting and digraphs etc. Always let the kids come to you. Try not to clap your hands and say “OK kids we are going to do this activity now.” Even in your best ‘Meryl Streep THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME acting voice’, they KNOW. They just KNOW. In their little heads they go…”Yep, you’re trying to teach me something. I’m not having it Mum. Sod off. This bit of card that’s been on the floor for three days has suddenly taken my interest.”Anyway I’ll stop jabbering on now. There are PLENTY of fab resources online and Jolly Phonics on You Tube are a good place to start if you want to get to know the initial ‘Sounds’ your child will be introduced to through Phonics in a fun way or I did some Letter of the Day videos which can be found on my You Tube channel. At the moment Ewan (age 4.5) is great with his letters. He’s grasped all of his Phase 2 Phonics sounds pretty well. But when it comes to blending them together to form a word he’s not up for it. He finds it hard and therefore it’s a turn off. So I need some games to make this element of reading a bit more fun. Find a place to display your letter of the day every day. Fridge? Radiator? A Door? somewhere they can see if regularly and access it from their height. However I have always found children to be self absorbed little sods and so I have always started with the letters in their name when playing at home, rather than S A T P I N which they do at nursery. Unfold the letters and form your silly word. It’s more likely than not going to make a word that isn’t real ZOK, KAM, DOV, PUM etc. That’s OK. I explain why below*

But don’t panic. I can explain it in five minutes (way less actually, it’s really simple!) and I recently did a short series of videos which linked below, where I explain it all, one minute at a time. Time for Home School: Maths is THE book you need if you're home-schooling, from former teaching assistant, bestselling author and social media superstar Daisy Upton AKA Five Minute Mum.Mix up the letters in the big bowl saying “Silly soup, silly soup, we’re going to make some silly soup” Write letters on ball-pit balls and use a muffin tin or cups or cupcake cases to hold them to create the words. Get a bag or small container. Any will do. I’ve used a shiny gift bag or an empty tissue box before. You can have a fancy one or an Aldi bag for life. Doesn’t matter. The book is also dedicated to someone very special. Since I first started Five Minute Mum I get sent hundreds of photos of children playing my games which always makes my heart sing. One day I spotted Zoe, along with a message from her mum Carmel explaining she was very poorly but loving playing my games as she went in and out of hospital. It especially meant a lot to me, because as a child my brother and I had a good friend called Sam who lived on our road. Sam had leukaemia and despite a very long, brave battle throughout our childhood, he died aged 9. The photo of Zoe immediately reminded me of Sam and those years spend playing with him as he repeatedly lost his hair and went through surgeries and treatments. Encourage your little ones to write a letter. A magical one! To a Harry Potter character, to the fairies, to a naughty troll, to the Christmas elf. For Florence who is just 4, she told me what she wanted the letter to say, I wrote it down and she signed her name.

Lay out 5 pots, each with a potion ingredient in. One with the bicarbonate of soda, one with the vinegar, I also then had - one with coloured water, one with water beads, one with lemon juice. But you can use whatever you like. So what to do as a parent? Well, keep it simple. Either use the correct name for the letters as in the alphabet song or the SOUND the letters makes as per phonics. Try not to use ‘muh’ for M, ‘puh’ for P, ‘suh’ for S - you get the idea….!

First of all you could try showing them how to write the letter onto the paper or post-its, both capital and lower case and see if they want to copy and have a try too. Then after that, we often run around the house looking for something that has the SOUND that letter makes in it…I will often help and prompt by saying things like “I can see something with a h in it, am I looking at the hat, or the car?” and let them see if they can hear the H sound in the word hat. The sound doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the word. So for example if your letter of the day is X you might want to use box as the thing you find. After you’ve found an object, see if they want to draw it on the paper or post-its. Cut up empty toilet-roll tubes and write letters on them. Use a kitchen-roll holder or a broom handle to put the letters on and construct the words vertically. Now, as someone who worked in a Reception class and knows lots of lovely Reception teachers, rest assured…NOTHING IS EXPECTED of them in terms of letters and numbers when they start school. The teacher will start at the beginning, counting to ten and teaching the letters and sounds one by one. However that doesn’t stop me wanting to give Ewan a head start! 😉 I started following Carmel as she shared Zoe’s journey. Zoe was such a beautiful spirit. She loved fairies and rainbows and singing, and so much more. She would have been brilliant friends with my Florence had they ever met. Zoe died on 1st July 2020, and I along with many other sobbed as Carmel shared her incredible little girl’s final moments, listening and wishing SO much the outcome had been different.