As a parent, you want your child develop in all of the important ways – like their language, math, and social skills.
You want to encourage and support their early learning with the right approaches.
Most of all, you want your child to have the best opportunity to become the greatest version of themselves.
Being actively engaged with your child’s early https://www.crossroadsfeedandseed.com/ learning will help them progress positively in their social, behavioural, and core skills like language and math. Not only that, your involvement as a parent helps your child feel loved, connected, and appreciated, which in turn, furthers their confidence in learning and in life.
Magda Gerber, the founder of Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE) and inspiration for our work here at Harmony, tells us that, “An authentic child is one who feels secure, autonomous, competent, and connected. When we help a child to feel secure, feel appreciated, feel that “somebody is deeply, truly interested in me,” by the way we just look, the way we just listen, we influence that child’s whole personality, the way that child sees life.”
As a parent, you are directly linked to contributing to your child’s confidence, competence, and connection with the world. In fact, your involvement directly affects the educational outcome of your child. Australia’s Department of Education and Training shares that, “Parent engagement is associated with improvements across a range of indicators, including better education outcomes, better behaviour, and increased social skills.”
So, as a parent, what can you do to support your child’s early learning?
With everything on your plate as a parent, it may be difficult to know how to incorporate learning at home or where to find the best approaches to early childhood learning.
To help, we’ve compiled 5 simple and effective ways to support your child’s early learning.
After reading this post, you’ll be familiar with proven methods of enhancing your child’s early learning along with easy ways to put these techniques into action. While it’s valuable to know the best approaches for child development, it’s even more critical to implement them into your routine and family life.
Implement learning into daily activities
Without adding activities to your busy schedule, you can foster a robust learning environment by implementing educational elements into normal daily activities.
Math, language, and social skills can all be incorporated into regular tasks and activities, from humming while you rock your baby to sleep to talking through bathtime to counting as you walk up the steps.
When you add talking or counting to an activity, routine tasks become beneficial learning experiences and prepare your child for literacy and numeracy.
Read to (and with) your child
Read to and with your child as often as you can, with the goal being 3-6 times weekly. Make it focused, quality time spent together. Try not to rush the process or make your child feel that reading together is not important.
You can also use picture books with large colourful images. Talk aloud to your child while describing the pictures or making up stories.
Build upon what your child enjoys
Pay special attention to what your child is interested in, and ask your child care centre if they’ve noticed any activities that your child has particularly enjoyed. This will give you insight into what your child is naturally drawn to.
With this knowledge, you can enhance your child’s learning progression by offering them opportunities to interact with what interests them. Simple activities involving what they enjoy are great launching points for development in speech, counting, and science.
Have fun together with quality learning timeSet aside quality time to interact with your child in a fun and personalised manner. Involve play, movement, and music when you can.Provide uninterrupted time for independent play and explorationGive your child free time on their own to play and explore. Rather than engaging with them directly, allow your child to learn on their own, in their natural state. This time can be indoors or outdoors with toys, games, or nature.
