Ideas for helping your child at home.

We encourage parents to support their children's learning at school, by helping them also at home.

Here are some parent resources to help your child at home to ensure success.

 

Links and downloads ~ Literacy and Maths tips:

 

 

The Victorian Government's website Connect-Primary includes games you can play with your child to build their literacy and maths skills.

 

Where can I get help?

Your Child's teacher can provide advice about how you can help develop your child’s

literacy and maths skills. Some topics you could discuss with the teacher include:

Your child’s level of achievement on literacy and maths tasks.

The goals your child is working towards in literacy and maths, and how you can support your child to achieve these.

Strategies you can use to assist your child in areas that he or she finds difficult.

  

Cyber Safety follow up for parents - a helpful handout

Victoria Police’s Tracey Porter sent me through a document that provides a bit more information regarding checking settings, ideas for agreements in the form of a letter to a child, parental controls and privacy settings that can be accessed in the parent resources section of the school website.

 

 

Camp Sports and Excursions Fund

If you hold a valid means-tested concession card or are a temporary foster parent, you may be eligible for CSEF. A special consideration category also exists for asylum seeker and refugee families. The allowance is paid to the school to use towards expenses relating to camps, excursions or sporting activities for the benefit of your child.

The annual CSEF amount per student is: $125.

CSEF will be provided by the Victorian Government to assist eligible families to cover the costs of school trips, camps and sporting activities.

Please contact the school office for an application form.

 

Discover if your parenting strengths match those of highly effective parents - Free Parenting Profile Below

Being interested and involved in your children’s education is vital to engagement and learning.

You know how important it is to your child’s engagement and attitude towards school for you to show interest and participate in school-related activities. You make a point of attending as many school events as possible. You ask your child about specific learning at school. You take time to learn the names of their teachers. You ask to see examples of their schoolwork and find out what their favourite subjects are and why.

There are literally hundreds of published research articles that show, without a shadow of a doubt, that parent interest and involvement in their children’s education is at the top of the list of ways which you can encourage high levels of achievement in your child.

Mark Kent

 

Child and Parent Factors That Impact Child Anxiety

 

A considerable body of research has identified various child and parent factors that contribute to and maintain anxiety symptoms in children. Yet relatively few studies have examined child factors (including threat-based cognitive bias, neuroticism, gender, puberty and age) as well as parent factors (including maternal anxiety and child-rearing style) and the extent to which these factors serve as predictors of child anxiety. 

A Griffith University team in Queensland set out to examine the extent to which child and parent factors are uniquely associated with child anxiety symptoms. They also set out to determine whether associations of child factors (which included child neuroticism and cognitive bias) with child anxiety were indirect via maternal rearing behaviour. 

The participants were a large sample of children between 7 and 12 years of age with varying levels of anxiety, including those with diagnosed anxiety disorders. Data were collected from both children and parents, and age, gender and pubertal status were also considered.

 

Key findings:

Parental anxiety is a significant risk factor for child anxiety, given the higher than expected incidence rates of anxiety in parents of anxious children, compared to the general population.

Mothers who self-reported more trait anxiety had children with higher levels of self-reported anxiety symptoms.

Mothers’ anxious child-rearing and over-protection were associated with elevated child anxiety symptoms.

Child temperament characterized by high levels of arousal and emotionality may evoke child- rearing behaviours from mothers focused on minimising potential risk exposure and harm, which in turn, could elevate anxiety symptoms.

Early maturing girls experience more symptoms of anxiety and depression, and these symptoms are more stable over a subsequent four-year period than in normally maturing girls. 

Pubertal stage is considered a more powerful predictor of girls’ internalising symptoms and disorders than chronological age and in comparison with boys.

Children were more anxious when they were reported to be more advanced in pubertal status by their parents, when they had a tendency to interpret more threats in ambiguous situations, and when they self-reported more neuroticism.

 

Things you can do:

Chill out more often. Make time for yourself and time for your kids. Take a long walk together, visit a bookshop or library where kids can relax without having to talk).

As a family, practise relaxation techniques (deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, exercise, visualisation, laughing, stretching, dancing, listening to music, singing, reading together, meditating together).

Reassess your parenting style. Are you a helicopter parent or in danger of becoming one?

Keep screen time to a minimum, especially if your child is excitable or easily agitated.

Encourage age-appropriate independence – and not just for your kids. You need time out to be as independent of them as they are of you.

Talk often about fears and how they can, in many cases, be unfounded. 

Make sure your kids know how and where to contact you in an emergency – not every five minutes.

Ensure everyone has a good night’s sleep and that healthy family nutrition is a top priority.

Parent from the heart, rather than parenting from online advice and the myriad of books on how to be a ‘super’ parent.

Source: Waters, et al., Journal of Anxiety Disorders 26 (2012) pp737-745

 

Staying Safe OnlIne

Staying safe online is everyones business. At the following link you may find some practical hints to help you help your child.

Threats to children’s internet safety include invasions of privacy, cyberbullying, sexting and harassment. Options to protect your children include parental controls, apps and tracking software. But the most effective way to keep your kids safe is to talk with them about online risks, how to avoid them and how they can come to you when something goes wrong.

consumernotice.org/data-protection/internet-safety-for-kids/ 

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From The Principal