Cultivating Learning at Home for Young Children

Cultivating-Learning-at-Home

In the early years, cultivating learning at home is all about play.

When babies, toddlers and young children play, it gives them an opportunity to explore their world and understand how the things around them work and to learn about themselves.

As parents, we often feel pressure to be constantly entertaining our children. However, a little boredom can actually be good for young children and their learning.

When a child has unstructured time in a safe environment, with no particular task at hand, their active, curious mind will automatically look for opportunities to play and explore.

How Can You Help Cultivate Learning at Home for Your Child?

As a parent, there are many ways you can harness this principle to help your child’s learning and development:

  1. Unstructured Time – Be sure to allow plenty of time in your child’s days and weeks for unstructured play. Give them space and encouragement to investigate and explore the things that interest them.
  2. Wait for the Invitation – During your child’s play time, let them decide whether or not you participate. If they ask you to play with them, by all means get involved. But let them make the call on whether you join in.
  3. Watch and Notice – If your child does ask you to play with them, take a moment to take notice of what they’re doing and look for ways to extend the ideas they’re already exploring.
  4. Let Them Lead – Try to curb any impulse you have to direct things or decide what happens next. Ask questions and allow your child to make the call on any ‘rules of engagement’ and the direction your play takes.

Understand more about this idea with this short video from the Raising Children Network: https://raisingchildren.net.au/preschoolers/play-learning/getting-play-started/stepping-back-from-play

Providing a Space for Learning at Home

If you have a play space for your child, whether that’s in their bedroom or another room, there are a couple of small tweaks you can make that will make your life easier and create a good environment for play and learning:

Less is More:

If you’re able to, store some of your child’s toys and craft materials somewhere else and rotate out what’s in their play space. This helps your child focus on what’s there and allows you to introduce items that are ‘new’ to your child without having to spend time or money getting new things.

Everything in its Place:

In general young children respond well to order, but they need help in establishing and maintaining that. Give each thing in your child’s play space its place. Even the act of finding things and putting them away can become part of your child’s play ‘routine’.

We hope this article will provide some useful ideas for cultivating learning at home for your child.

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