As an adult, you undoubtedly have witnessed that those who continually strive to learn more and keep an open and curious mind succeed in greater ways. Learning should be something that is celebrated and enjoyed, not a task that is dreaded or disdained. Developing a love for learning starts at a young age. Children are naturally curious, which makes them naturally prone towards learning. However, over time kids can learn to associate learning with negative thoughts.
Help set up your child for a successful life by instilling a love of learning in them from a young age. At Yellow Brick Road, we provide child care in Minnetonka, with a heavy emphasis on positive learning experiences. Read on to learn four tips for helping your child develop a love for learning.
#1: Let Their Curiosity Be Your Guide
Children come into this world with an acute curiosity. From the early stages of infants exploring the world around them through touch and taste to toddlers trying to pull everything off your shelves to preschoolers exploring life through play, the desire to learn is a natural human instinct.
As your kid grows older, the requirements for learning start to change. Different skill sets will need to be learned at different stages and some tasks might take more work for your kid than others. It is during this transition that many kids can begin to associate negativity with learning.
If you see that there are areas of learning that frustrate your child, prevent them from developing a negative thought pattern by utilizing their strengths to learn more difficult tasks. For example, if your child is struggling with numbers but absolutely loves all things bugs, help them learn numbers through their curiosity for bugs. Perhaps you can work on learning how many legs are on different bugs and then adding up numbers by imagining how many legs there would be if a spider and a house fly met.
Try to take their positive curiosity and channel it towards the areas that will be more difficult for them so that they never lose their love for learning.
#2: Be Conscious Of How You Talk About Learning In Your Home
Children often learn a hatred for learning from the language they hear in their own home. Do you complain when you have to learn a new task for your job? Do you talk about how much you hated a school subject when you were a kid?
The language you use to talk about learning will play an influential role in how your young child views learning. Try to be a lifelong learner yourself to set an example. Explore your own curiosity so that your child can see how, even as an adult, learning can be exciting and rewarding.
#3: Celebrate Learning Over Perfection
While it is a good thing to celebrate when your child succeeds at learning a new task, be careful that your home doesn’t just celebrate perfection. For example, if your child is struggling with the alphabet and didn’t accomplish reciting all 26 letters, reward them for the act of learning instead. Make a celebration of the fact that they are doing a great job at working towards their goal and emphasize how wonderful the act of learning itself is.
You can even ask the simple question of your child at the end of the day, “What did you learn today?” Celebrate even small things they learned, including non-academic things. For example, maybe they learned that their friend Jimmy loves the color green. Even learning about others is a positive way to reinforce their curious mind and helps to develop social learning skills. Not only should you ask them to share what they learned, you should also celebrate things you learned that day with them. This helps them see that you are also trying to learn new things every single day and that no one is done learning.
#4: Choose The Right Child Care Program
When you opt to put your young child into a daycare program, make sure it is a place where learning is celebrated and healthy childhood development is a priority. Here at Yellow Brick Road, we provide outstanding child care in Minnetonka that emphasizes positivity in learning. We can help set your child on the right path for the years ahead. Talk to us today about how we can help your child develop a lifelong love for learning.