Learning at home

Last updated: 03/04/2025

Supporting your children’s learning at home is important. Not just for their academic success but to enable them to become confident, inquisitive and able learners. Learning doesn’t need to mean sitting with their head in a book. There are so many opportunities for learning at home and it is a great way to bond with your child.

Online safety

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Learning at home

Boy and girl writing in notebook

Children learn so much from the world around them. They learn by observing, listening, exploring, experimenting and asking questions. Focusing on learning based on their interests can help them to stay motivated and ask questions. Play can be a great source of learning and can be easier to engage children of all levels and abilities. Cooking, gardening and many other activities you do around the home can become learning experiences.

Why not get your child involved in cooking dinner? Measuring and counting ingredients is a clever way to incorporate some maths without sitting with a maths book. Playing schools is a great way to get your child engaged in classroom learning while having fun. Nourish your child’s creativity and language and writing skills by making some menus for their new restaurant. Crafts can be a fun way of talking about the things you are creating as well as helping motor skills.

Learning doesn’t need to be boring. It is about finding out what motivates your child and using that as a basis to let them develop their own learning. Ask them what they would like to learn about and see what areas they are interested in. Watch how they learn. We all learn differently. Some learners benefit from visual learning others learn through doing and participating.  As well as learning through play, you may want additional resources to help support what your child is learning at school, nursery or at home. We have put together a few websites that may help consolidate what your child is learning.

Learning at home guidance and resources

  • Parentzone: Education Scotland Learning at home
  • Parent Club: supporting children and young people with additional support needs
  • Twinkl: education resources

Preparing for learning at home

Routines, suitable space, and regular breaks all help when working and learning from home. Parent Club has lots of tips and resources including:

General learning

Literacy and English

Numeracy and maths

  • Sumdog: for ages 5 – 14, available on website and an app
  • Topmarks: games and resources for learning maths for ages 5 to 14
  • Parenzone: supporting numeracy at home

Science

Languages

Social studies

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Covering your tracks

You may not want other people to know that you’ve been searching for information or help from OPFS.

When browsing the internet whether on a mobile phone, tablet or computer, you leave a ‘history’ trail of pages and sites you’ve visited.

It’s impossible to completely avoid being tracked online but if you’re worried about someone knowing which sites you’ve been looking at, there are some things you can do to help cover your tracks.

If you’re using a laptop or desktop computer, try keeping another document or website open in a new tab or window while browsing. If someone comes in the room and you don’t want them to see what you’re looking at, you can quickly switch to another window or tab.

Deleting browsing history

You can delete the history of websites you’ve visited, but it’s important to know that if you delete your browsing history, someone else using the same device may notice.

If you share a tablet, mobile phone, laptop or computer with someone, they might notice that passwords or website addresses have disappeared from their history.

Find out how to remove your browsing history and other data from some of the most commonly used browsers:

Browsing in Private mode (incognito)

When browsing ‘incognito’, the internet browser won’t store cookies or record your browsing history on the computer, mobile or tablet.

This option is available on popular web browsers i.e. -

Toolbars

If you use a search toolbar in your web browser, remember that your searched items can be saved as part of your history. Find out how to delete your searched items from the following search engines: