"With the #stayathome season, parents of young children have had to switch up to teacher mode at home. Since it can get overwhelming at times, our writer slash preschool educator, Shoby, shares some fun and cute methods to ensure your child’s education keeps going at home, even when it seems like the world had to stop a while."
by Shobana Chandran
When I became a mother with my first-born, Micah, I thought myself quite fortunate as I am an early childhood educator by profession. This meant that I would know the workings of supporting his development in positive, affirming ways. But I soon realised that in spite of being a professional in the field, I never had experience supporting my own child’s learning at home.
So, juggling between learning to be a mother, managing those raging hormones, making sure Micah’s needs were attended to, coping with the lack of sleep, I found myself wide-eyed and stranded. I was in shock of the situation I found myself in.
“I’m an early childhood educator, I’ve worked with lots of children at work – of all ages even so!”
Gradually when things became a little calmer at home and with support from my family (thank God for families), I took things in my stride and discovered that learning is everywhere if only we open our minds and our hearts to it.
I am a working mother, so, the learning at home had to be of minimal fuss. I started finding learning opportunities everywhere at home – even with household chores. Everything quickly fell into place and became a natural part of my routine at home with Micah, and subsequently with my daughter, Maia, when she arrived.
Thing is, a lot of learning developments begin at home. It is their safe haven where children learn the basics - to eat, crawl, speak, walk and most of all feel comfortable being themselves. Even if your child is attending playgroups or preschool, home is still a fantastic place for them to explore abilities and extend capabilities.
How then can we, as parents, best facilitate the learning of our children at home?
For a child between six months and three years, the best approach to any learning is routine, repetition and reinforcement. Here are some tips on how you can make learning at home fun and effective.
Learning Letters
After introducing your children to a letter and its sound, take them on a treasure hunt around the house to look for the same letter. Have the same letter hidden in different places. With some planning, you could have them looking for the same coloured letter in different places, then vowels in different places. This could go on and on!
Another exciting idea is to get them to love writing! Have your children form letters by using clay, painting with their finger, tracing it out in a tub of flour, salt, whipping cream – get creative! The idea behind this is to make writing or tracing a letter fun so they would start off on the right note and not look at writing as a tedious task.
Rote Counting Numbers
Get those little hands and minds working by roping them in when you work on your household chores. Have your children help you count your cloth pegs when you’re pegging the clothes up to dry, or the number of pants to fold, number of eggs you have just purchased from the trip to the grocer’s, or count the number of steps when you move up and down your staircase at home! The idea behind this to get them to love counting and maybe even help you with chores whenever possible. What you are teaching them indirectly is a skill that is crucial to lay foundations for future learning in school and also in life. So start them young!
Learning Shapes
Introduce a shape at home – with emphasis given to the number of sides and points. Get them to go on a “shape-walk” around the house to look for objects with the same shapes.
Or say you’re making sandwiches together for breakfast. You can use the bread to teach them the square shape with 4 sides of equal length and 4 points. And when you cut the sandwich in half diagonally, you get a triangle! So what you are doing is extending their mind to look for shapes in everything that they see. This is a good foundation for maths!
Exploring Colours
I love teaching colours at home, in fact, my children learned their colours by folding the laundry! We used to sort all the blue clothes together, the green ones together, and so on. It’s a fun activity to try at home.
On days when I could get my hands on some mangoes, we will be learning about yellow. And the children get to choose and wear their favourite yellow clothes or accessories. On these days, we will all be searching for yellow objects at home. Our aim is to help our children understand that colours have no size, colours can manifest in a variety of shapes and textures. So grapes can be green, but so can apples. Green can be smooth but also rough. Learning colours has never been easier and fun!
"The idea behind supporting our children’s learning at home is to use existing objects at home, even sticking to common practises. Then, we creatively infuse the learning in these every day practises. When we are not going out of our way, learning becomes more natural and sustainable."
Try these tips at home and you’ll soon realise that house chores aren’t that boring after all – they could be things that you do with your children and most importantly, it is fun-learning for them. All we have to do is to add a dash of creativity in what we intend to do. Also do bear in mind, your children are never too young to start helping you at home. Enjoy learning with your family!
by Shobana Chandran
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