P1 Bookbug Bag

Ask your little one to write you a secret message on their whiteboard, then hide it somewhere for you to find. When you find it you can write a message back, hide the board again and then ask them to find it and see if they can read your message. You can also both draw pictures to make your message easier to understand.

Their whiteboard can also be a fun way to get them to do their spelling homework.

Think of a word and draw boxes on the board for each of the letters. Ask your child to guess letters that could be in the word. If they get a correct letter, write it in the box where it belongs. If the letter isn’t in the word, write it somewhere else on the board. If they can guess the word you’ve chosen before the board is full, they’ve won!

To help your child learn about shapes and symmetry, use the whiteboard to draw half of a picture (e.g. the outline of a butterfly, a ladybird, an octopus or a house) and get them to draw the other side. Swap roles so they draw the first half of the picture and you have to finish the drawing.

You can find more tips for making maths fun here and on the Maths Week Scotland website.

Give them mini-challenges each day with their number magnets to keep them entertained, like counting backwards from 10 to zero, or a doing a couple of sums like 3 + 4. How fast can they do it? Can they write the biggest number they know? Can they say it out loud?

You can find more tips for making maths fun here and on the Maths Week Scotland website.

Maybe Bear would find life easier if he had a spare pair of glasses! Ask your child to draw Bear a new pair using the coloured pencils in their bag – they can make them as outrageous as they like, so it’s harder for Bear to lose them!

Without his glasses on, Bear mistakes a tree for a deer and a bush for a crocodile. When you’re about and about, how about asking your child what objects they can see that look like animals? A stone could be a mouse, or a lamppost could be a giraffe!

For more games to keep kids busy when you’re out and about, check out our play outdoors page here.

There are lots of fun little details to spot in Bear’s Lost Glasses. Can your child spot…

• A bee
• A pink butterfly
• A red squirrel
• A snail?

What else can they see?

If your child could have anything for a pet what would it be? A sausage dog, like the one in the story? A guinea pig or cat? Or maybe something bigger, like… a dinosaur! Ask your child to draw a picture of their fantasy pet and colour it in with their Bookbug pencils. What does it eat? What does it like to do? Could they take it for a walk to the park?

The face on Evie’s T-shirt changes to reflect how she’s feeling. Together, you and your child can look at the pictures and see if you can work out what Evie is feeling. This could be a good opportunity to talk about different emotions and how we show them. You could try drawing some simple faces together with different expressions, like emojis. 

Our page on talking to your child about mental health has more tips for helping them talk about how they’re feeling.

Evie spends a long time trying to work out how long Mr Long Dog is! How about asking your child to compare different things around your house (like spaghetti, a scarf and the sofa) and see which is the longest? If you have a ruler or tape measure you could even measure how long they are, which is great practice for their maths homework.

The author is trying to help us understand the difference between big and small – Marcel the bird is bigger than Steve the worm, but Felicity the cat is bigger than Marcel. You could play with this idea with your child – what’s bigger than a ladybird but smaller than a car? What’s smaller than them but bigger than a tin of beans?

Marcel is not very kind to poor Steve! Encourage your child to think of some kind things they could do to make people smile, like sharing their toys or giving someone a hug. Then ask them to turn these promises into vouchers they can hand out to friends and family to trade in when they need them. Our page on kindness has lots more ideas for encouraging kids to be kind.

Marcel clearly thinks Steve is delicious! What’s your child’s favourite thing to eat? You could have a look at our recipes and choose something tasty to make together. Helping to weigh out ingredients is another way to sneak some maths into your day.

If they’re a picky eater, you might be able to tickle their tastebuds with other recipes that link to stories – like Steve spaghetti, the three bears’ porridge or Mr Wolf’s pancakes.

You can find more tips for tempting fussy eaters here.