Fun Ways to Encourage Your Child to Learn

 

Using play and creativity is essential if you want to improve your children's learning capabilities. At the end of the day, all children want to learn about the world around them, but they all have different ways of going about this and expressing themselves. Before you read this list on the ways that your child wants to learn, it's recommended to talk to your child and identify alongside them the different parts of the world that they enjoy learning about the most and then encourage learning in that area. Then you can use this guide to strategize on the different and powerful ways that you can use fun ideas in order to bring out the best in your children.

 

Use a Curiosity Approach

 

A curiosity approach is one of the leading ways to encourage children to learn. Developed by Lyndsey Hellyn and Stephanie Bennett, it is a way of keeping children engaged with the world around them in a natural and progressive way. The important part of this is to create a children's space that moves away from the standard brightly colored aesthetic one might expect for young kids in favor of calm and natural spaces with objects strewn about in such a way as to use the location itself as a potential for children to play and learn. You can learn more about curiosity and children's development over at Rainbow Smiles.

 

Use Music

 

Children love to sing and play along to music, especially when the song is very silly. Inspire your child in the power of music by getting them involved with music early on. This can come in the form of informal music lessons or even through a jam session. Remember to only encourage what they are doing as opposed to being too much of a stickler about learning the fundamentals of music. This might change if your child seems to develop a proper affinity for a musical instrument, then you should probably get them lessons from a professional themselves.

 

Read to Your Child at Night

 

Reading to your child is one of the most amazing privileges you can have as a parent; sharing whole worlds with your children that will quickly stimulate their imagination! Pick something like the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings books, endless worlds of fantasy and flight that children can easily find themselves lost in. Try and end the reading session on a cliffhanger, then very cleverly leave the book by the bedside table. With any luck, your child will pick the book up and read it in order to find out what happened in the novel themselves. Try and start reading to your children as early as possible, and if they seem engaged straight from the off, you can start reading them adult books (within reason) to make them feel much more talented and intellectual.

 

Encourage Computer Games (But Only the Right Ones)

 

Not all video games concern simply disposing of endless enemies in increasingly gruesome ways! In fact, many of them are designed with the concept of learning embedded directly into their systems, meaning that your children can learn lots of valuable skills as well as useful facts through the power of these games. This way is particularly effective because some children will learn without even realizing that they are learning in the process. Just make sure to limit their screen time as children can quickly get addicted to games, which can have serious knock-on effects on other parts of their life, stunting their learning capabilities in the long run. This is especially true if they are playing games without the amazing learning capabilities that were expressed above.

 

Reward Achievements

 

By having a variety of incentives for your child when they successfully complete a task, this will inspire them to want to learn more and better in the future. For example, if a child reads for at least an hour, you could reward them with half an hour of television or give them some ice cream if they complete their homework on time. After a while, you will see that they have organized themselves in such a way that they enjoy this learning for its own sake without the need for rewards. With this carrot approach, you are sure to see rewards. Whatever you do, do not punish your child for not learning at the level that you want them to. This could cause the opposite effect and lead your child to resent learning completely.