We recently read the following article:
How to Make Your Home a Learning Environment for Kids By Carol Johnson Children spend most of their time at home, not at school doing structured learning. By working to make your home learning environment, you can encourage your child’s natural instincts and interest in learning things on his own.
Most people think that children do all of their learning at school, and once they walk through the doors to their house, they won’t be learning anything useful until the next day in class. Many studies have shown just the opposite—most learning takes place in the home. Think about it; children spend at most only 30-40 hours a week in school, yet there are over 100 waking hours each week that children spend outside of school. Even allowing for time watching television or playing video games, that can still leave children with just as much time learning at home as they have available at school.
The biggest advantage to children learning at home is that they can explore whatever interests them and learn at their own pace, instead of having to fit a schedule of what’s expected of them. When children are at home they spend a lot of their time actively playing and using their imaginations, fighting, eating, watching and hearing adults interact, and even daydreaming. If you tap into a child’s natural instinct to learn by making your home a natural learning environment, not only will your child be happier and better educated, he will be more receptive to learning at school.
Children, especially young children, are naturally creative. You can encourage this creative spirit of exploration at home in many ways:
Provide your child with resources to develop his own sense of creativity. Create an area in your home that is specifically devoted to your child’s interests—an area for painting or drawing if he enjoys artistic endeavors, a room or part of a room devoted to learning a musical instrument, a mini science lab with microscope and slides, a place in the yard to plant flowers or vegetables to watch things grow, or an area with simple tools and materials for building things. Children can be amazingly creative with just the simplest of things, so you don’t have to spend a lot of money or set aside huge sections of your house for only learning activities. Don’t buy your child expensive kits, games, and learning equipment. Let him use his own creativity and imagination with whatever tools and materials you provide for him. The more imagination he puts into a creative activity, the more learning goes on.
Provide a quiet place where your child can go for privacy. Especially if your child shares a room with a sibling, be sure there is a quiet place where he can go to read, listen to music, write in a journal, or just sit and look out the window daydreaming. Parents today often want to pack their child’s daily schedules with things to do to keep them busy and social all the time they’re away from school. But quiet "alone" time is essential for encouraging children to do their own thinking and reasoning without feeling pressured to meet someone else’s expectations for them.
Exploit your child’s natural creative impulses by paying attention. If your child tells you about something he learned at school, read in a magazine, or saw on television that was interesting to him, provide corresponding materials for him to pursue that interest at home. For example, if your child gets excited by seeing a movie about space exploration, get him a telescope, a mobile of the solar system, or posters and books showing constellations or pictures from space explorations. If your child is fascinated by bugs or creatures he sees in your yard or on your porch, get him an ant farm, a butterfly net, or just a magnifying glass. And of course there are always a ton of books available about any subject your child may be interested in. Listen to your child, hear what interests him, and then give him the materials and space he needs to pursue those interests.
Play games.There are many popular board games that have been around for years that do much more than entertain children—they provide wonderful learning experiences while also developing important social skills and a healthy interest in competition. Scrabble and Boggle teach children about spelling and word structure. Pictionary helps children learn to conceptualize thoughts and ideas visually, in addition to helping encourage artistic abilities. Battleship teaches children about the Cartesian coordinate system, which will come in handy later for learning in advanced mathematics classes. Clue teaches logic, reasoning, and deductive thought. Mousetrap and Jenga teach mechanical engineering and construction. Most entertaining games can also be educational in some way, but be careful not to force your child to play them. For the true educational value of a game to be realized, children must choose to play them voluntarily.
Set a creative example for your child. The most important task for any parent to encourage learning at home is to nurture your own creative instincts. No matter whether you enjoy reading, playing music, painting, working on jigsaw puzzles, or flower arranging—allowing yourself regular times to engage in your own favorite activity not only gives you a chance to relax and ease your own stress, it gives you the chance to model creative behavior for your child. When you show your child that learning can be fun, you help to encourage your child’s own natural creative and exploratory tendencies.
Above all, be careful not to criticize your child if he doesn’t pursue the learning opportunities you provide him with in the way you want him to or at the pace you plan for him. After all, he has to learn things at school according to lesson plans and school curriculum—you shouldn’t be trying to duplicate that environment at home. Instead, make your home a place where a broad spectrum of activities and learning experiences can take place, and let your child set his own schedule and pick his own style of learning. When you open the door to your child’s natural desire to expand his horizons, you reinforce his impulse to discover things in his own way. And by watching him explore his environment and make use of the learning environment you provide at home, you just might learn a thing or two yourself.
The Learning Center
