Back to school: Education at home

As the schools head back for the Autumn term we are exploring the different educational settings and setups that are often encountered by Children Looked After.

Through this series of articles, we hope to address some of the questions that you might have about how your foster child might access their ongoing education.

In this article, we are looking into education at home.

Many children in care will have had a disrupted education prior to coming into care and therefore may need some extra support to stop them from falling too far behind. As foster carers there are a number of things that you can do support the ongoing education of children in your care.

Reading and literacy is an important skill that can be easily practiced in a home environment. Reading aloud to and with younger children can help them build confidence in their reading abilities and can strengthen trust and relationships between foster carers and the children in their home. For older children and teenagers reading can provide an outlet for their emotions, it can help them to understand different situations by providing knowledge and allows them to develop their emotional capacity including emotions such as anger and empathy. For ideas on books that explore some of the complicated issues children in care might be going through take a look at the article we wrote for literacy day here.

Numeracy skills can also be developed through in home activities. Cooking with children can be a lot of fun to do together whilst offering the opportunity to take part in basic numeracy skills. Getting children to identify the numbers in a recipe, counting cups or teaspoons of an ingredient into a bowl or letting you know when you reach the right number on the scales when weighing out ingredients. When the item is ready to go in the oven checking the time on the clock and working out what time it will be done provides an exciting way of getting used to reading the clock.

Consider getting small children to count their teddies, line them up in order from smallest to biggest, group by colour, give the teddies characters and stories. Education through play makes learning a fun experience.

There are lots of fun ways to encourage and take part in education in the home.