Making Learning Fun For Little Ones - And Easier On You
With at-home learning becoming more of a standard with the constant will-they-or-won’t-they-close limbo of schools and online classrooms, finding ways to keep your kid engaged in learning at-home has never been more crucial. Here’s a few of our favorite tricks to keep the littles into it.
Use games
All children love to play games so it stands to reason that you can encourage learning by incorporating game playing into their learning. There are lots of readily made educational board games and card games already available on the market to buy and play with your children, or if you can, think outside of the box and come up with your own games to enhance their learning.
Use resources
Readily available board games are not the only resources known to make learning fun. There are a plethora of online resources available to children of all ages which can engage, entertain and educate children. It could be online mathematical challenges and competitions, time trials, or resources such as studentreasures.com whereby children are encouraged to write their own story and see it published as a book. There is a whole world of potential resources to diversify and excite the learning process at wide-ranging price points, you just have to find them.
Take regular breaks
It is well known that a child’s attention span is limited. Children cannot be expected to sit and listen to you talking at them endlessly or focus on one thing for a protracted period of time. Therefore it is important to remember to factor in lots of regular break times as this will help keep children interested and engaged for longer. Another great idea is to incorporate movement or activity within the break time, particularly if children have been required to sit for a period during their learning. Use the time to get outside and run around and expel some of the physical energy that they have been storing up sat learn.
Hands-on learning
While every child will learn differently and some may benefit from hands-on learning more than others it is still a learning technique that should not be overlooked. You can apply creative hands-on learning to almost any subject matter by incorporating arts and craft projects, field trips, or tools that diversify learning from the typical pen and paper approach. Not only will this type of learning provide fun and variety it can help to instill the lessons you are trying to teach as they may be more likely to remember them.
Limit the time
Even adults can only take on so much information and learning in one day so you cannot expect children to keep at it for hours on end. If children are starting to become disengaged, uninterested, and lacking enthusiasm then it might be time to pack up for a few hours or even the day and leave it there. For a child to really learn they need to be engaged. Children who are unwilling and disinterested are unlikely to be retraining much useful information or enjoying the process of learning, ultimately making them less keen to keep doing it.