6.6 – Helping children to learn

Every experience in a child’s life can be a learning experience. Keep talking to children, looking for opportunities to teach them and thinking about how to stimulate them, make them think and help them learn.

Children learn through daily activities but they need your support to do it so. For young children try things like counting the stairs, or naming all the things you use or walk past.

Ideas for encouraging children to learn through everyday activities.

• Singing counting songs/nursery rhyme/traditional songs.
• Help with shopping – counting, weighing, comparing and finding.
• Magnetic alphabet letters to spell out words on the fridge – names, colours and shapes.
• Learn what floats in the bath – bath toys, filling and emptying.
• Playing shops.
• Looking after dollies and teddies.
• Making a drum kit with pans and wooden spoons.
• Making dens – two chairs and a sheet will do!
• Helping to separate washing and work the washing machine.
• Learning to do zips, laces and buttons.
• Washing up – how much water, liquid, scrubbing and rinsing.
• Building with blocks.
• Puzzles.
• Reading.
• Drawing and painting.
• Asking for help or directions.
• Ringing emergency services – learn name, address and phone number.
• Vacuuming and dusting.
• Using a real, or play, dustpan and brush or iron and ironing board.
• Safety in the kitchen – knives, electricity, hot water.
• Using a map.
• Gardening – naming plants, trees, birds.
• Helping to fix things – a play or real screwdriver, shelves, bike, car.
• Writing letters, emails, cards.
• Playing cards.
• Counting how many cars are a particular colour. Make a graph, or work out percentages and probabilities.

Ideas for encouraging children to learn through everyday activities

• Playing guessing games like ‘I spy’.
• Spelling.
• Safety – road crossing, strangers, internet.
• Health and hygiene – washing, teeth, food, nutrition.
• Choosing clothes – wellies for the rain, hat for the sun.
• Writing lists, poems, menus, stories.
• Looking after pets.
• Conversations and communication.
• Table manners.
• Sports and teamwork.
• Managing friendships.
• Help to manage money – open a bank account, saving.
• Babysitting, helping the family with younger ones.
• Knitting and sewing.
• Watching the news, documentaries, children’s TV.
• Listening to the radio.
• Discussing celebrity behaviour and its appropriateness (teens!)
• Scouts, Guides and other youth associations.
• Looking after school uniform and sports clothes.
• Discussing local issues.
• Talking about society in general – stereotyping, discrimination, struggles and successes.
• Visiting museums/library.

Every thing that we do with our children throws up opportunities to help them to learn. Learning doesn’t just happen at school and as parents we need to look for the opportunities to fit learning opportunities into everyday life. In the next activity we are going to look at a day in the life of two children of different ages and how they can learn through everyday activities.

Next: 6.7 – Helping children to learn – a day in the lifeBack: 6.5 – How to find support