Any little ideas that supplement a state school education?

[Iamwaiting]

My daughter goes to our local village school and is so happy, she loves it! And at her age (Y1) that is the most important thing as far as we are concerned.

However having attended private school myself with class sizes of 15, I can't pretend that the quality of education she is receiving is brilliant. Her teacher is wonderful, but realistically there is only so much she can do in a class of 30 with two children requiring 1 to 1 support (that they can't currently recruit for.)

It's no-ones fault, just the way it is. But we have a little disposable income (not enough to afford private plus the nearest is 40 mins away!) but enough to fund extras to help with this side.

So for instance we have a Reading Chest subscription so she has unlimited books of an appropriate to supplement the one a week she gets from school. She attends Stagecoach to help with her confidence.

Both those ideas came from here, so I was wondering what little extras other people do to support their child's education?

Just to be clear that this is not a state vs private school debate. Both are what they are, and as I said my DD's happiness is the most important thing right now. But at the same time I feel like maybe there is a bit of a middle ground to help support her in areas the school simply doesn't have the funding to be able to.

Thanks!

Totally agree

Talk to her. Engage with her. Be interested in her interests and share yours. Read with her, go for walks and discuss what you encounter. Teach her to be kind and strong.

I teach in a very 'posh' school and we have kids that can do all sorts of impressive things, but it's the ones with fully engaged parents who genuinely thrive, Grade 7 oboe or not..

THIS!

You can skip everything on this thread, if you just talk with her often, discuss child centric things with them, watch Newsround and dicuss the topics, discuss her feelings, your feelings and things going on in the family, in your life and home.

My parents sent me to a very down at heel school but led by example, read a lot, had lots of interests and held lots of diverse opinions , very broad minded. They let us play often but also treated us with a respect that taught us to value our selves and our opinions,

SO many parents just don't listen to their children!

Do this and your children will be leaps and bounds in development.

Develop her self confidence , encourage her to persevere, give her opportunities to talk, to explain, and give her opinion, encourage responsibility by looking after a pet, having household chores.

Baking, crafts, going outdoors. They can be great ways to extend their learning in different ways.

We dropped a few activities at that age as found it overstimulated them we then engineered ‘boring’ days at home / in the garden at first there was moaning then after a couple of weeks of the odd ‘boring’ day we notice how dc started using their imagination more and actually playing again rather than the almost staged play they experienced at school with all the pre set up areas (setting up games seemed to take up more time than playing and helped with organising and delegating skills) we also noticed how their creative writing developed once they’d tapped into their own imagination