Your child’s first year of school should be fun and exciting.
time. Children who feel comfortable and prepared for this
first school experience are more likely to be rewarding and
productive years, and therefore associate positive feelings with
education. Since parents are the first and most important
important teachers, you can play a key role in preparing your
children for a successful school experience by exposing them previously
key concepts they will experience in school. This could be
done in a fun and enjoyable way by making the daily game
experiences learning experiences too.
New learning builds on prior knowledge, therefore the more
exposure or experience a child has with a concept, easier
it is for new learning and deeper understanding to occur.
Provide your child with prior exposure to concepts such as
alphabet, numbers, following directions, listening, reading,
cutting, drawing, etc. It will help them feel more comfortable and
safe when they experience these similar concepts at school,
thus better allowing learning to occur. schools are becoming
more academic, reliant on standardized tests, and fast paced.
Give your children some familiarity with the concepts that
meeting can help reduce anxiety and stress that often
accompany these experiences. Children who are too stressed
or uncomfortable are less likely to be able to concentrate and
learn.
Children have a natural motivation to learn and a curiosity.
About the world. You can enhance and nourish this natural
Motivation to make pleasant gaming experiences learning
experiences too.
For example, children’s games are a great resource for combining
learning with physical activity. Duck, duck, goose can be a shape
to reinforce concepts such as the alphabet by having children
say the name of a letter instead of the word, duck, and a word
which starts with that letter instead of the word goose.
Hide and Seek can become a learning experience by hiding numbers,
letters, colors, your child’s name, phone number, address, etc.
around the house and ask your child to find them.
Simon Says is a great game to practice following
directions and positional words such as in, above, below, etc.
Bingo can be used to reinforce recognition of numbers, letters
recognition, the difference between upper and lower case
letters, letter sounds, colors, etc.
You can have a scavenger hunt while shopping, driving, or at home.
seeing how many letters, numbers, colors, or shapes your child has
child can find.
She can also play I Spy, where she says, “I Spy with my little
eye something that is…” and describes a letter, number,
shape, color, etc. that you can see clearly. so your son
try to guess what you are describing. Your child can too
take turns describing something (this helps develop
abilities).
Children’s individual interests can also be incorporated into
learning experiences.
Blocks or Lego can be used to teach patterns
(ask them to build towers with alternate colors), counting,
order (separate the blocks by colors, shapes, size), etc.
If your child likes to color, have him create rainbow strokes.
of letters or numbers by tracing them with as many colors as
possible.
Play dough can be turned into shapes, letters and numbers.
Interest in cars and trucks can be put to use when learning to
draw telling your child to keep his car (crayon or pencil)
on the way (whatever is being tracked).
Interest in animals or dinosaurs can be used when learning
how to cut with scissors relating the opening and closing of
the scissors to open and close the mouth of an animal.
You can pretend that the animal “eats” the lines on the paper.
Your child’s environment can also play a role in preparing
for the school. Provide a number and variety of books for your
child and taking the time to read to them is one of the most
important things you can do for your education. reading to a
the child teaches them vocal skills, vocabulary, listening skills,
left to right orientation, cause and effect, knowledge about the
world around them and pre-reading skills. The most important is
instills a love of reading and books that will benefit them
throughout their entire education. After all, each topic
(including math) requires reading.
Our brain absorbs information from our environment in a
conscious and unconscious level, and between 80-90% of all
the information absorbed by the brain is visual. Therefore,
providing visual displays in your child’s room or elsewhere can
it really helps in learning. Things like the alphabet, colors,
numbers etc can be hung or displayed in places where your
the child will see them. Even magnetic letters on the fridge.
It can help with retention and learning. That’s why many schools
have a lot of pictures in the hallways and classrooms.
Young children can also learn many concepts through music.
For example, they usually learn their abc’s from the alphabet.
song. There are many children’s tapes available that teach
concepts through music. Play these while in the car or while
Your children’s play can help them learn. Despite
they may not be singing or look like they are even paying
attention, subconscious learning may be occurring.
You can also practice separating from your child by
short periods of time, such as enrolling in a program or playing
group or have them spend time with a babysitter. Separation
anxiety can be traumatic for some children if they are not used
away from their parents, and this anxiety can inhibit
their ability to learn and relax while at school.
Finally, no matter what methods you try with your child, the most
The important thing to remember is to make them likable. You
you want your child to associate positive feelings with learning.
Take turns choosing activities; give your son some choice
sometimes. This makes them feel less dictated and more
willing to learn. In addition, offer them a certain variety of activities,
don’t always use the same learning methods all the time as
this can create boredom and disinterest. Choose the methods
that work best with your child (every child is different) and
have fun!
Children are like flowers, they all bloom at different times.
But parents can help nurture them by providing experiences that
enable them to become children who love to learn and
school.
