Tip 1: Experience Living, Playing and Learning
There is no secret in this, my humble opinion, about kids and learning. I have had years of experience in teaching ESL, General Population, ED, ADHD, Autistic, Gifted, and Slower Learners and I know there are a LOT of ways to teach children, but in my experience, “experience” is the best teacher. The more experiences a child has from birth on, the more they will learn and relate what they have learned to what they are currently learning; and that’s golden.
I know you have heard that a child can learn more by doing than hearing sometimes. If you tell your 3-year-old that the pot on the stove is hot, well, they may not listen. However, if they grab the handle and feel the heat, they’ll know from then on what your words meant. Let’s hope they do not learn that one the hard way.
Writers write to their audience. If a writer is targeting a very young child, they will not write a story for them to read about how to best be first base player in a baseball game. The very young child doesn’t really know a ball from a hole in the wall until he or she experiences a ball. The writer will introduce a ball. Likely a colorful eye-catching ball and have the words “BALL: '' under the photo. This is because the young child does not know the basics and has not experienced them and the writer knows that, of course.
However, a sixth grade child has many more years of experience and probably knows a ball, the game of baseball, and position too. The author who is targeting them will expect to tell them how to pitch a ball better, but they won’t start with a picture of a ball and the word under it. A writer writing for major league baseball coaches won’t go over the different positions and such when writing to that target audience. It is the same with all subjects too, not just reading. Authors and school text books of all kinds from science to math, literature to social studies will write to the grade level they are teaching to.
But what if your child is lacking in experiences throughout their childhood? Maybe a parent who is tired from work prefers that their child sit in front of the television and play video games until addicted and they become their only source of experiences? We’ve heard children who are born and do not get the attention, touch, feel, can become stunted severely. There are plenty of horror stories, but that’s not what this is about. Experiences such as squishing their tiny toes in a thick mud puddle, helping mom pick out food from the grocery store, going to the dentist and having a cavity filled, trying to run on the sand and realizing it is much harder than running on the grass and even trying new foods and helping to mix ingredients in bowls. These are of great value. If your child lacks real enriching experiences, they will fall behind in school.
If they can connect later in their life the reasons that it is much harder to run on sand than on grass and their personal experiences with both, they can use their experience with the sand and grass runs to connect to a science lesson and understand it rather than gloss over it and become uninterested. It sounds simple and it really is. To help your child in a fun and enduring way, live life with them and try it all! You don’t need to travel the world to go to an Indian restaurant and try the food, smell the dining room, learn the names of a spice or two and then decide how they feel about it. It cost nothing to help dad rake the leaves and learn that this chore is seasonal. Dad could even mention that every fall they rake lots of leaves. Later, when learning the seasons in preschool or kindergarten, they gave reference, opinions, critical thinking skills and can connect time with dad to seasons. He/she will “get it”.
Science, writing and vocabulary and history are literally all around us. Take the time to enrich your child daily in something they have never done, tried, eaten, or even words they’ve not associated with anything in particular yet. They will read better, math will be easier as will science and heck, all the subjects. Their learning skills like logic and reasoning will become stronger with every passing experience that is new and different. Promise!
Let me know what you think! Until next time, fondly, Linki
(This is the first in a series of “How Kids Learn Best” here in my new blog)
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