Fun and caring ways for parents to help their children expand their general knowledge.

Children need general knowledge in order to solve problems, think critically and expand their vocabulary. An extensive vocabulary encourages language and reading skills.

Young children are generally enthusiastic learners. They love to learn about the world in which they live. You can encourage them to learn and help them to retain what they are learning by being involved as follows:

1. Notice, appreciate, support and encourage
   
   Take notice of the topic your child is currently interested in or learning at school.  Children learn best when they have a personal interest in the topic they are learning about. If your school age child shows disinterest in or is struggling with a current topic at her school try to encourage her interest by showing her how it is relevant or applies to her life. In other words help her connect what she is learning in class to the real world.
   
   Appreciate your child’s current topic of interest from her point of view. Topics that adults may find mundane and uninteresting may be novel and exciting for a child discovering it for the first time. Help your child to expand her knowledge on this subject and you may uncover some interesting facts you never knew yourself.
   
   Children learn best when they have support and encouragement from a primary caregiver. You can show your support and encourage your child to learn more about her topic by doing the following:
   
   
2. Talking
   
   Ask your child questions about her topic of interest and encourage her to ask you questions about it. By discussing the topic with your child, you will be expressing your interest in it and thereby showing support and encouragement. You don’t need to set aside time to do this. You can chat in the kitchen whilst you are cooking or in the car on the way to or from the store or school. If your child has to explain a topic to you, or talk it through with you, she will actively sort through and classify the facts about it within her brain and therefore improve her own understanding and memory of it. Talk about everything you are doing and why you are doing it. Let your child hear you work things out aloud, whether you are measuring or doing monetary calculations or even just working through a thinking process let her hear you talk your way through it.
   
   Fortunately moms are usually very talented at talking and chatting all day long!
   
   
3. Reading
   
   Read to your child (or with your child) as much as you can on her current topic of interest. You can also choose related topics and show her how they link up. Expose your child to many different types of reading materials.  Visit the library or source books, magazines, flyers and advertisements from your own home.  Screen the reading material for inappropriate content.   Choose a mix of material that is at her level of understanding and that is beyond her level of understanding. In other words alternate between books that are fun and easy to read at her age appropriate reading level and encyclopedia’s or fact books that provide a challenge and broadens her vocabulary and knowledge.  Kids love interactive books such as sticker books, audio books, lift the flap, spot the difference, slide and find and things to spot.
   
   
4. Play games
   
   Children learn better and faster when they are having fun. Incorporate your child’s current topic of interest into family games. Provide your child with games that relate to her topic of interest. You can also encourage her to create new games if she is old enough or change traditional games to incorporate the topic. Charades, memory games, snap and objects in a sock are very versatile. Incorporate games that cover a range of skills including gross motor (big body movements), fine motor (drawing, cutting, squeezing) and thinking games. You can play games at the dinner table or in the car or at the store.
   
   
5. Experience
   
   Children love to learn through experience. Doing and experiencing a topic of interest will engage many (or all of) your child’s senses which reinforces memory retention and recall.  They also love novel and interesting!
   
   Arrange family outings to places that relate to your child’s current topic of interest. Factories, museums, music concerts, the park, a walk around the neighbourhood (if it is safe), markets, sports games, aquariums, science museums, farms, beaches. To make a family outing even more fun, make it a treasure hunt or organize an activity list. You can do this by taking a list of things to find or spot (use a picture list for young children) or a list of tasks to complete. Older children can create these lists themselves a few days before you go on the outing. This will encourage them to research the topic further.
   
   If you have to take your child to the shops with you, try to incorporate learning opportunities appropriate to her age at the shops. For example, if your child is a toddler, get her to help find and select items at the shops. Fruit, vegetables, milk and bread and easy to handle and less likely to break. Chat to her about the different areas in the store where you will find things. For example, the bakery, the frozen foods section, the green grocer, the delicatessen etc.  If you have older children learning math, ask them to work out how much you have to pay at the check-out counter and what change you require if you are paying cash. (Be reasonable here, don’t expect an 8 year old to add up a week’s worth of groceries-unless they are really gifted.) Make sure you have allocated lots of time for this!
   
   Look for teaching opportunities in your environment. Keep your eyes open for anything relating to your child’s topic of interest in your environment that you can use for games or topics of discussion. For example shapes in road signs, posters and adverts with alphabet letters. Items in shop windows. Look for numbers on signs associated with routes or icons used to represent places (plate, knife and fork for restaurants).
   
   Let your child incorporate some physical activities into her learning experience! For example your child can jump on the trampoline whilst reciting her times table or counting in 5’s forwards and backwards or saying the alphabet. How about walking around the garden in the style of a particular animal? Try to encourage your child to come up with her own ideas for learning and reciting through exercise rather than telling her what to do.
   
   
6. Create
   
   Encourage your child to engage in creative activities relating to her current topic of interest.
   
   Creative activities your child can do at home include:
   
   Painting, baking, cooking, building, crafting, making music, growing plants, science experiments.
   
   Through the above she can incorporate topics of interest about measurement, colours, processes, shapes, sounds, living things, non living things, counting, letters, weight etc.
   
   For example if your child is interested in dinosaurs, she can bake dinosaur shaped cookies, do a volcano experiment, pretend to walk like the various types of dinosaurs around the garden – chase her prey if she is a meat eater, sing songs about dinosaurs and make instruments to accompany them – she can incorporate sounds that indicate dinosaurs walking or eating or roaring, make a dinosaur dig by using plaster of paris and dinosaur toys, make dinosaurs out of play dough (she can learn measurement if she makes her own play dough),  make dinosaur eggs with paper mache and balloons, make a dinosaur park using toys and building materials  etc.

Tip:

Whilst you are going about your daily routine try to notice things about what you are doing or processes you are using that will relate to your child’s current topic of interest. You can then points these out to your child and expand on her knowledge or get her involved in your activity. This will also help to show your continued interest in the topic.

For example let’s continue with the dinosaur theme. If you are cooking with eggs you can say: “These eggs remind me that dinosaurs made eggs the same way reptiles and birds do today. How many people do you think a Diplodocus egg would feed?“

If you are unable to uncover anything yourself then do a bit of research in books or on the internet. You may even start to look at your chores from a different angle and even enjoy them or better yet entice your children into helping you with them!

Note:

Provide the learning opportunities and tools, encourage and support your child’s interests but try not to take over!

Posted: 8 May 2012