4 Ways To Motivate Your Children When Learning At Home
According to the USA’s government census bureau, over 90% of children that are of school age have engaged in some form of distance learning during the pandemic. Teaching is a highly skilled profession, and many parents feel it is difficult to engage their children in their learning. Here are four ways to motivate your child when learning at home.
Don’t Always Sit At A Table
Children do not have the same concentration span as adults. And even adults need breaks from sitting at a desk all day. Try to mix up activities with simple practical science experiments or some gym time playing in the park. When you are at a table, make sure the activities are correctly matched to their learning ability and are fun. There are free writing activities for kindergarten that are designed to hold a child’s attention and combine learning with playful engaging exercises.
Learn In Nature
The leading experts at the Child Mind Institute recommend playing outdoors as a way of stimulating a child’s creativity and imagination. Alongside this, outdoor learning allows children to apply lessons in the real world. Try to take your child out into the woods and explore the world around them. You could collect acorns or seeds and use them as counters to promote math solving. You could measure a small bud, week after week, to see how fast it grows. You could use the colors of the forest to inspire a picture or a poem. Think imaginatively and use the world around you as a stimulus to inspire learning. As a lot of distance learning will be screen-based, getting out into nature also allows the child to detach from a digital learning environment.
Celebrate Achievements
In a school environment, teachers will often use rewards as a positive affirmation to encourage learning. For instance, children may have a star chart, and once they build up enough stars, they may get a sticker or some extra playtime. The teacher will make sure their peers also support and cheer them on when they do well. Try to replicate this by creating a system of rewards at home that encourage good learning. If you are the type of parent that has a small stockpile of children’s birthday presents, consider using one or two of these to mark any big milestones that the child achieves.
Create A Timetable
Children can feel overwhelmed if they have to tackle everything at once. There can be a lot to learn over the course of a day. Try to break things down for the child clearly with a timetable of learning. This will help a child identify that they are tackling one subject at a time, and mark their progress through a day. If you bombard a child with all the lessons at once, they may become confused and frustrated. Allowing them to see how you intend to progress through the day also keeps them stimulated as they know there is a new activity just around the corner.
Finally, remember communication is key. If you feel your child is struggling or losing interest, ask them why. Perhaps you will be able to find a solution together, that allows them to reach their full potential while learning at home.
