Are You Creating Early Home Learning?

Children start learning from birth and as their parents you begin the learning process through your interactions, communication and the play you have with your children, creating active learning.

Early learning activities that provide beneficial learning experiences include:

•  
• reading to and with your children - this develops a love of reading, it opens up a world of imagination, teaches concepts and introduces the ideas of letters and words.
•  
• drawing - develops fine motor skills (that is the ability to do more involved activities with their hands and fingers) and introduces the early form of writing and communicating ideas.
•  
• talking about all areas of your daily activities - this may sound boring but it helps develop their oral language and vocabulary skills as well as broadening their knowledge base.
•  
• visits and outings - to friends, playgroups, shopping, museums, libraries, the beach etc, allows for rich learning experiences, there is room for learning about places, social interactions and lots of visual and oral stimulation.
•  
• helping with chores - making of meals, unpacking groceries or a dishwasher, helping with housework or gardening - these can all lead to great discussion about many different concepts from maths, language, science etc and can help foster a development of responsibility.(if your children are anything like my eldest, a small chore can become a complicated conversation as he wants to know how everything works.)
•  
• driving in the car - can provide lots of learning experiences - songs, games, observation skills etc
•  
• playing games - providing children with items for make believe play, role play, dress ups will allow them to develop their own learning experiences as well you can use more commercial products to begin to develop a wide range of skills.
  Playing games with your child will allow them to also develop social skills in regards to sharing, taking turns and communicating.
•  
• art and craft - this helps develop fine motor skills and also creativity. Children may also begin to develop math concepts of spatial awareness, patterning and symmetry.

As you can see almost any activity you do with your child can have an active learning purpose - it just depends on how you approach it.

But most importantly during this time of early home learning, provide your child with lots of praise and encouragement - this will develop their confidence and self esteem and give them a continued love of learning and a sense that they can achieve anything.