Practical Ways to Nurture Learning: A Guide for Busy Parents
Parenting can be demanding, including learning in your child's daily life doesn't have to be a struggle.
Parenting can be demanding, but incorporating learning into your child's daily life doesn't have to be an uphill struggle.
Here are some hands-on steps with accompanying examples to make the process easier and more enjoyable:
Establish Routines: Life's rhythm can simplify many things. Set up routines like breakfast time, homework hour, and bedtime rituals. For example, an after-school routine could involve a snack, a break, homework time, and then free play.
2. Promote Positive Conversations: Maintain an encouraging dialogue about their school work. For instance, instead of concentrating on scores, discuss what they found exciting in their science project or history lesson.
3. Utilise Incidental Learning: A casual chat during a car ride about how engines work or a discussion about photosynthesis while gardening can lead to learning moments.
4. Optimise Lighting: A well-lit space enhances productivity. Ensure their study area has plenty of natural light during the day and an effective lamp for evening studies.
5. Encourage Physical Activity: Play games that require movement, like a family soccer match. This balance ensures they're not stuck in front of screens all day.
6. Initiate Engaging Conversations: Find topics they're interested in and discuss them. If your child loves space, for example, a dinner conversation might revolve around recent Mars missions.
7. Celebrate Their Passions: Even if your child's fascination with drumming seems noisy, support them. Set 'drumming hours' to manage the noise and encourage their passion.
8. Express Confidence in Them: Show excitement for what excites them. Your positive reactions, especially when they master a challenging task like a tough math problem, can do wonders for their confidence.
9. Nurture a Reading Culture: Fill your home with varied reading materials. Leave books in their room, the living room, even in the kitchen. A family reading hour can be a fantastic daily habit.
10. Foster Independence: Allow them to make choices, whether it's picking their outfit or deciding the weekend meal. This autonomy builds their confidence and decision-making skills.
11. Model Positivity and Problem-Solving: Maintain a positive attitude and frame challenges as solvable problems. If a favourite toy gets lost, turn it into a fun detective game to find it.
12. Personalised Learning: Tie their tasks to their interests. If your child is a football fan, use the sport to teach concepts such as angles and speed, or percentages by analysing player statistics.
Remember, every child learns differently. Embrace the diversity of experiences as learning opportunities and stay spontaneous. As Leonardo Da Vinci aptly put it, 'Learning never exhausts the mind.' This approach fosters a lifelong love of learning in your child.
How focussed are we on being on time?
Do we live by the clock? Does it give us a sense of security so that we feel we can achieve everything we set out to do?
Take care not to measure everything by the clock. If we tend to be too focussed on being on time, monitoring our actions by time and feeling that if we are watching the clock, we will not operate in a much more efficient and successful way.
A problem can develop when we are preoccupied with time. We miss the little things that are so important especially with children. Their spontaneity can sometimes slow us down but is that such a bad thing? To stop and take the time to savour the special unpredictable moments with your child are more powerful than simply being focussed on the time and getting it right.
Are you so preoccupied with being on time that the stress in the family house goes up several notches?
Teachers are compulsive planners who know that their time is precious and that they have a set requirement of work to complete in a specific time. However, despite their preoccupation with time and awareness of its importance in their work, they still will stop the lesson. With the children, they will savour those special moments in the classroom that enrich the day and the experiences. Such awareness of the spontaneous precious moments that can happen at any time are important for refreshing the day. They are all about deeper more meaningful contact with people. They can also be instrumental in changing plans and directions for the day. Teachers realise that listening and redirecting actions can enable a classroom to flow more smoothly and more productively.
Consider:
Can you listen to the small things that happen around you with your child?
Are you so preoccupied with being on time that the stress in the family house goes up several notches? Can you relax a little in this area?
Can we plant in our mind the realisation that we put the value of our children over time and the things that must be done?
Think about how preoccupied you are about time. Can you make some adjustments and still feel that can manage the situation?
Those precious moments we capture on camera with our children can sometimes be missed when we become too preoccupied with time.
“Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.”