Fun Ways to Help Your Child Learn

As a parent, you want your child to succeed, to learn, and to develop at the proper pace as they grow older. When your child is young, they are in an important stage of life and learning a ton of new information that they will carry with them throughout the rest of their lives. As a parent who wants their child to succeed, you need to work with them to help them learn as much as possible.

While childcare centers and preschools can help your child learn the important skills they need to know at different aspects of their lives, parents need to do their part in teaching their child important lessons and helping them learn.

At Adventures in Learning in Tustin and Orange, we offer different childcare programs including infant care, preschool, pre-K, and school-age programs. In our programs, your child will learn the basics and our compassionate staff will help them grow and develop. However, we know that what you do for your child’s education is important too! We wanted to give you some tips for helping your child learn in fun ways. In this blog, we are going to talk about some unique ways that you can help your child learn. Read on and get started today!

Read

Reading to your child is a great way to help them learn about language and spend some quality time with them. This is a fun activity that they will love doing with you. Reading to your kiddo can help them learn letters and sounds. You can point out the different letters and have them sound out words. This will be extremely beneficial as they learn the alphabet and begin to learn words.

Try to read a book or two to them every night before bed. This will not only help them wind down, but it will also help with their literacy skills. Eventually, your child will want to try reading their favorite books to you. While they may not actually be reading and just telling you the story by memory, this is still great! It shows that their cognitive and memory skills are in full swing.

Label Everything

As your child begins to learn the names of different things and how to read, you can help them by labeling everything. Labels are a fun and simple way for your child to connect item names to letters, sounds, and words. Print out labels for the different items around your home and tape them to the item. While your home may look a bit like a preschool classroom for a while, this is a great way to help them connect the word to the item.

Add labels to drawers, furniture, and other miscellaneous items in your home. As your child begins to learn to read, they will be excited to go around your home reading the names for each item. You can slowly start adding labels to other items to challenge your child and get them excited to learn new words.

Make Them Count

Learning how to count and what the different numbers represent is another important lesson that your child learns at a young age. You can help them further develop these skills by making them count different items throughout the day.

If you give them a few crackers, have them count how many they have before eating them. If you are in a line, have them count how many people are in front of them. Find different opportunities for your child to count, but make sure they can count to the number of items there are. They may get frustrated if they don’t know how to count as high as they need to.

Point Out Letters and Numbers

As you go through your daily routine, there are signs everywhere. You can find words and numbers just about anywhere, which makes it easy to have your child point out the letters and numbers they recognize. If you are walking down an aisle at the grocery store, have them tell you what number it is. Point to a letter on a street sign and ask your kiddo what letter it is, be sure to have them tell you what sound it makes and a word that starts with it.

You can also do this in reverse. Let’s say you are at the zoo with your child. Point out an animal, ask them what the animal is called, and have them tell you what letter it starts with. This is a great way for them to think of the letter based on the sound it makes. It is also a great way to help your child identify animals.

Play Games

There are several games that can help teach your child about letters and numbers. Matching games are great at doing this and can help improve your child’s memory as well. However, games can teach your child a ton of other important life lessons that they will carry into adulthood, including following rules, taking turns, and not being a sore loser.

Try to choose games that are simple enough for your children to understand but still requires some thinking and skills. Teach your child the rules, make them follow directions, and make sure they are taking turns. Games can teach your child social skills and make them think in a different way.

Go Exploring

Get outside, head to a museum, take a walk through a natural area, and go exploring! Exploring different areas can help your child learn more about the world around them and helps them become curious. And a curious child loves to learn!

Spend time outside in your backyard, find some bugs, plant a garden, and let them dig around. Or go for a nature walk with your child and explore new areas. You will likely see some wildlife, new plants, and other cool things that will help your child learn more about the world. Getting your child to notice their home from a different perspective and realize how big the world truly is can help to stimulate curiosity, which leads to learning.

Answer Questions

Your child will have a lot of questions about everything. Why do you have to go to work? What is jelly made of? How do bees make honey? Why is the moon only out on some nights? When your child asks these questions don’t just tell them that you don’t know. Help them learn by answering their questions the best you can.

If you don’t know the answer, ask them what they think the answer is, and then look it up with them. You both will learn something new and their love for learning will grow. Plus, when you look it up with them to learn what the answer is, you are showing them that there is always something new to learn, even as an adult.

Follow these tips and make learning fun for your child and help them develop important skills! Schedule a tour at Adventures In Learning in Tustin or Orange today.