Advice please! for 'extra' work that's fun!

[Lydwatt]

I have a dd in year 1 who is loving her work at the moment and it is lovely to see

She has a love of activity books and the like. We have done Floopy's activity book for stage 1 and we have the box set of the 'At home reading book'

I just wondered if there were any good recommendations for fun activities based round numeracy or literacy for a stage 2 to 3 kid?
I want to keep it low key and driven by her....which seems to be for this sort of stuff right now....

sorry.... 'floppy' !

Playing shops with money and price tickets, paying and change and shopping lists.

My son's in Y1 too and I've just started trying to do fun maths things as I felt we were always concentrating on reading at home. So I bought two big chunky dice (though clearly you could use normal dice and save your money!) and have been playinga game that I drew out on a large piece of paper. I drew a grid with 12 columns and 10 rows, the columns were numbered 1-12 along the bottom. Using 12 small toys (we used toy soldiers, but whatever interests your child)the idea is for the toys to have a race. You take turns throwing the two dice and adding the numbers together. Whatever number they add up to, the toy in the corrseponding column moves up one place. Once one toy reaches the other side the game is complete. It's good for getting them to add up the numbers between one and six quickly with each other and to understand a bit about probability as obviously toy number 1 never moves, numbers 2,3,11 and 12 are less likley to win than 7 for example. Well my DS likes it anyway, and until we started this he wasn't able to count on from a number, he automatically counted from 1. Another dice game is called "Don't throw a 6" and using one dice the aim of the game is to make the longest sum. So you start by writing zero on a piece of papaer and then each person takes a turn to throw the dice and add the number on to the sum that should get longer and longer...until someone throws a six and then it goes back to zero. Hope that makes sense.

My kids love the Carol Vorderman books.

Invest in a small whiteboard and dry-wipe markers and play "schools". Let your DD be the teacher and teach you how to read/write/do sums etc (which she will probably love) or teach her dolls. If you get a magnetic whiteboard you can use magnetic letters for spelling and sounding out words too!

Have a look at workbooks in WH Smiths and see if there are any that look appropriate for your DD in terms of layout, ability and "fun rating". Some have lots of stickers to put on the pages which some children really like. You could use these as part of the "schools" game.

Occasionally give her a small amount of spending money and let her work out (with help if necessary) what she could afford in a shop (and if she can manage it, what change she'll get!) the whole "hands on" spending experience is really valuable.

There are some free ORT worksheets here:
www.primaryresources.co.uk/english/englishbooks_readingschemes.htm and you might be able to find others by googling.

Starfall is a good site for reading and phonics www.starfall.com/ and they have great downloadable worksheets as well as the phonic activities online (which do have an american accent unfortunately!!)

ictgames www.ictgames.com/index.html has some lovely free online games and activities for both literacy and numeracy.

Have fun!

Thanks for some great suggestions here! These are all very helpful...it will be great to harness the enthusiasm she has

(long may it last...)