Your child’s first year of school should be fun and exciting.
weather. 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 beforehand
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 as well.
New learning builds on prior knowledge, so the more
exposure or experience a child has with a concept, the easier
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 you feel more comfortable and
confident when they experience these similar concepts at school,
thus better allowing learning to occur. schools are becoming
more academic, reliant on standardized testing, and fast-paced.
Give your children some familiarity with the concepts you
encounter can help decrease the anxiety and stress that often
accompany these experiences. Children who are too stressed
or uncomfortable are less likely to be able to concentrate and
to learn.
Children have a natural motivation to learn and a curiosity.
About the world. You can enhance and nourish this natural
motivation to make play experiences enjoyable learning
experiences too.
For example, children’s games are a great resource for combining
learning with physical activity. Duck, duck, goose can be a way
to reinforce concepts such as the alphabet by having children
say the name of a letter instead of the word, duck, and a word
that begins 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, on, under, etc.
Bingo can be used to reinforce the 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.
by seeing how many letters, numbers, colors, or shapes your
child can find.
You can also play I see, I see, where you say, “I see, I see with my little
eye something that is…” and a letter, number,
shape, color, etc that you can see clearly. then your son
try to guess what you are describing. Your child can also
take turns describing something (this helps develop
skills).
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 alternating colors), counting,
sort (separate the blocks by colors, shapes, size), etc.
If your child likes to color, have him create rainbow strokes.
of letters or numbers tracing them with as many colors as
possible.
Plasticine can be made into shapes, letters and numbers.
An interest in cars and trucks can be used when learning to
trace telling your child to stay with their 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,
orientation from left to right, 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 education. After all, every 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
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 refrigerator.
It can help with retention and learning. This is why many schools
have lots of pictures in the hallways and classrooms.
Young children can also learn many concepts through music.
For example, they usually learn their abc 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 seem like they’re even paying
attention, subconscious learning may be occurring.
You can also practice separating from your child by
short periods of time, such as signing up for a program or playing a game
group or have them spend time with a babysitter. Separation
anxiety can be traumatic for some children if they are not used
to be 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 nice. You
You want your child to associate positive feelings with learning.
Take turns choosing activities; give your child a choice
sometimes. This makes them feel less dictated and more
willing to learn. Also, offer them a certain variety of activities,
do not 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.