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.

There are lots of different animals in the book – see if your child can make a list of them all and count up how many there are. What kind of noises do they all make? Which is their favourite? Which is yours?

If you have a magazine or newspaper handy, you and your child could try drawing the eyebrows of doom on some of the people in the photos. You could talk about how having angry eyebrows changes the way a person’s face looks.

The eyebrows of doom make the animals in the book angry. This is a good chance to have a chat to your child about different emotions and how they make them feel inside. You could look at all the expressions on the animals’ faces and see what other emotions you can find, like confusion and shock and relief.

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

The cat in the book has made themselves a tent out of their bed sheets. Can your child find this picture and then make themselves a cosy den from cushions, blankets or sheets? It’ll be the perfect place to read this story!

The bedtime story only has 10 words! Can your child come up with their own story that’s only 10 words long?

The animals in the story have a lot of soft toys! Ask your child to count how many they can see. Do they have any of the same toys? Which is their favourite?

You can find more top tips for bedtime here. 

The dogs in the book are all different shapes and sizes. Which is your child’s favourite? Can they think of names for all 10 dogs? They could write the names on their whiteboard or draw pictures of the dogs with their new names beside them.

The dogs get into all kinds of trouble in the book. See if your child can spot…

• a dog with their head in a jug
• a dog in a teacup
• a dog under a bowl.

Use the whiteboard and magnetic numbers to help your child work out all the different ways the 10 dogs and sausages are divided up in the book. For example, 1+9=10, 2x5=10.