Use Everyday Activities to Help Your Child Learn
Your child's education is vital to his or her success in life. Everyone agrees about its importance. Parents play a pivotal role in education, perhaps even more than the teachers. If you do the math, you will find that 6.5 hours of school per day over a 36 week school year multiplied by 13 years of school comes to just 15,210 hours. That's just under 634 days or 1.71 years spent in classrooms. It doesn't sound like much in the grand scheme, does it? And teachers are expected to impart not only basic skills such as reading, writing and math, but also to teach science, social studies, art, music, physical fitness, health and a host of other topics. No wonder parents need to enrich their children's education! So much more can be done at home to support the goal of educating the child with just a little effort and planning. You can not only provide a framework for learning, but you can also offer opportunities and incentives to practice as well as expand horizons and encourage academic growth.
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Develop an educational attitude. To begin with, it's important that you develop an educational attitude. Nearly every experience that you share with your children can become educational if you put the right spin on it. Life is a classroom, and if you focus on learning, you will find that teachable moments and opportunities for practice abound.
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Take every opportunity to build language skills. Most school experiences are language-based. Your child will gain more from academic activities in school if he or she has good comprehension and expressive skills. You can build language skills in many ways. Share a great variety of quality literature. Read picture books, rhymes, poetry, chapter books, magazine articles and newspaper pieces together. Converse regularly. Too many of us focus our talks with children on directions (pick up your toys, brush your teeth, eat your vegetables and so forth). Conversations, on the other hand, allow a give and take of ideas and thoughts. You and your child participate as equals. Play word games, too. You can find many common ones in the toy department of your local store. Unusual ones can be found in museum gift shops and specialty shops, and there are some classic gems that are totally free, like Higgety-Piggety, Hang Man, and Twenty Questions.
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Author: Sandy Fleming