Early childhood is not exactly a precise period of child development and education. This means different things in several different contexts. In terms of childhood education, it means children up to the age of eight. These first eight years of your child’s life will be marked by changes and more growth that they will never again experience naturally in their lives.
Child Education Is Essential
It is quite vital that parents, as educators, understand the times in which we are all living and the unique complexities of age groups. Teachers all around the world are working hard to equip your children with the skills needed to succeed in the 21st century. Any investment for child education is always for the better. Toys for toddlers or new experiences are a beautiful thing to offer them, but education is the core.
Apart from instilling the flexibility to adapt to the ever-changing scenario readily, parents also need to foster learning environments that can encourage critical thinking. Parents’ involvement in child education is significant; they must promote learning environments that can stimulate social responsibility, global awareness, collaboration, communication, problem-solving tactics, creativity, and critical thinking.
How Do Children Learn?
Children learn about their nearby environments by listening, observing, exploring, experimenting, and asking questions. Being motivated, interested, and engaged is more important for younger children once they start their child’s education. It also helps them understand why they need to learn what is being taught.
In the case of children below the age of eight, they still learn through play. Plenty of free, unrestricted, and unstructured games, coupled with a child education toy, help them balance the formal lessons they learn at home or school. It also gives them a chance to unwind after following some daily routines.
Children also learn by using objects in different ways. When your child is exploring, experimenting, and creating an environment with a range of materials, he/she is learning about problem-solving in circumstances where there is no ‘right’ answer.
As we know, children are not born with social skills; they need to be taught, just like reading and writing. Playing with other children will help your kids develop the skills required to communicate and get along with others.
Your child’s connection to your community can also offer some helpful learning experiences, as well. For instance, visiting the local libraries, playgrounds, parks, and local shops or walking around your neighborhood will make your child understand how it works. As you and your kid are exploring the area together, you can tell him/her interesting facts or stories about the city and share some things.
5 Ways to Educate a Child from an Early Age
Here are five early child’s’ education strategies that you can use to prepare your kids for the boundless future ahead.
Making Use of Integrated Technology
Kids today are born in the age of technology. Most of them turn out to be more technologically savvy than their parents. To connect with little ones, you need to learn to speak their language and understand them. You must become conversant with the technology that these kids understand so quickly at this young age.
If your child’s education plan succeeds in integrating technology while teaching, it means that you will be tapping into his/her interests and strengthen their technical skills, all while enriching their learning experiences.
As with any new development, you will have to keep them up with the latest happenings in the world of technology. If they love it, then they will evolve a deep understanding of the tools around them as well as why and how they are used. Additionally, increased connectivity with technology, or can safely be said as the Internet, will help you show your child the importance of Internet safety.
Cooperate Learning Structures
At first, the teacher-centered attention used to work. But today, you, as the teacher, need to make use of other effective techniques to educate your child at an early age. You need to benefit from a father/mother and child education center approach. With the help of cooperating learning, you will able to spark engagements with your child by encouraging interaction.
For parents with more than one child, you can gather them all instead of one kid at a time. This will allow them to discuss the materials and, in turn, maximize the level of participation. Your kids will work just as hard as you. It will no longer be a one-person show, and your role as a teacher will become that of a facilitator.
This child care education method will lead to higher achievement and promote confidence and problem-solving skills. If you research, you will find a lot of easy-to-implement and practical instructional strategies that can turn a dull living room talking session into a stimulating discussion. Most of them would probably contain activity sheets that can help you during cooperative learning.
Differentiated Instructions
You can tailor learning experiences and special child education to differentiate among the individualistic needs of your children. Primarily, there are three ways by which kids learn – by eyes (visual), by ears (auditory), and by touch (kinesthetic). It is believed that the characteristics of these learners and the types of activities they engage in can be used to distinguish their cognitive styles (field-dependent, analytical, holistic).
As a teacher, you need to match their activities and assignments according to their readiness levels and add appropriate extension activities. By offering choices, your children will feel more motivated.
Cross-Learning and Teaching
In contrast to the traditional methods of teaching a single subject at a time, you can study multiple topics simultaneously to help your child get a better grasp of learning the skills and the concepts. Of course, you would also need the help of your better half. Parents’ role in child education here is to blend in social studies, science, and math, along with writing and reading. To reach these goals, parents can buy some of the best baby keepsake books.
However, you should also know that this is much more challenging because you will be combining all the subjects at once. But, you can make use of specific tactics to overcome this issue. For instance, you can take advantage of simple project-based assignments where your child can work out a project and provides you with a concrete result.
Alternatively, you can also make use of problem-based learning techniques where you can guide your kid on how to develop solutions to real-life problems. In inquiry-based learning, the children generate their questions according to their interests and curiosities and look for the answers themselves.
These methods tend to work better because instead of telling your kids what to do and by what means, you let them engage in activities where they explore and look for answers in a more oriented way.
Learning Assessment
This is the result-gathering procedure that needs to be done by parents. It will help you customize the overall learning process that will match your child’s thinking and needs. Summative assessments used in school, while they might be useful, do not always describe clearly what the child is interested in. Additionally, by the time the entire data is gathered and compiled, it is already too late; the teachers start moving towards their next objective, while your child is still solving doubts about the previous content.
To prevent this problem, you can monitor how the children are learning while you teach using methods like questioning strategies, observations, discussions, peer assessments, self-assessment, etc. These methods can be implemented for a single kid or a bunch of them.
Thus, you will be able to gain additional insight into whether your child is picking up the things that you taught him/her efficiently. It will allow you to keep your finger on their pulse to ensure that they are learning to their best advantage.
Life Skills That Your Child Will Learn
If you manage to follow the steps mentioned above, your kids could learn crucial life skills at an early age. Life skills are said to be valuable lessons that your child can use throughout their lives. This is quite important because most children are not able to handle real-world problems and saturations until they are in high school. You should never wait for your kids to turn into teens to teach them those vital aspects.
The education of a child includes the following:
Decision-Making Skills
Every child should begin learning this crucial life skill at an early age and should be taught to make the right decision always. You can start simply by encouraging them to make fundamental decisions like vanilla vs. chocolate ice creams, playing with toys for toddlers, putting on white socks or blue ones, etc.
Once your kid reaches elementary school, they will start learning that with the right decisions comes rewards and learn to face the consequences of making bad ones. Help your kids weigh their options and evaluate the pros and cons of the choices before making the final decision.
Hygiene and Health
Children are never too young to learn about the importance of proper hygiene and cleanliness. While these habits first need to be enforced, your children will start doing them on their own once they realize their importance.
You need to explain to them why hygiene and health are such essential parts of their lives. As your kids start learning this aspect, they start doing it on their own. Once these habits become established, your kids will get them done without you having to remind them continuously.
Time Management
As parents influence on child education, most of you have already known the importance of time management. You must keep your family on track. With the help of the tips mentioned above, your kid will be able to learn how to spend their time effectively.
Not only will they learn how to measure it, but they will also be able to stay on the task and focus on getting it done. They will keep a schedule, which can make their days a lot easier. With this life skill, they will soon gain mastery over time and strive to get their work done on schedule and on time.
Conclusion: Child EducationIs Crucial
Teaching children below the age of eight is not an easy task. Apart from being able to communicate with them, they also need to get comfortable with you. But once you do that, you will be able to teach them without any hampering. The above-listed methods in this child education article are some of the best ways to teach life skills, etc. that will help them throughout their lives. What qualifies a child for special education? Absolutely nothing!
Now, what’s your take on child education? Let us know in the comments section!
Our Author
Jimmy Mays grew up in the Bronx in the 1990s and learned to be tough from an early age. Jimmy studied psychology in college and went on to self-educate himself on a myriad of topics. His huge passions are writing and running.
