5 Essential Learning habits Parents Can do at Home with their Child

As a current New York City teacher, I am dropping by some cognitive learning activities ideas you can do with your child at home. Preschoolers at this age are beginning to develop all areas, cognitive, language, social/emotional, physical, and adaptive skills. My motto is learning is best in its beginning "the earlier the better".

Here are some ideas: 1. Read to your child everyday before bedtime, or even before a short nap, or before dinner, lunch, or breakfast. The stories that best captivate preschoolers are the characters they enjoy watching, i.e. Barney, Dora, Backyardigans. I found that these stories keep students into the story and they enjoy participating to teacher questions. Its important preschoolers learn to answer simple "wh" questions related to the story to enhance and develop their speech and language skills. Telling them to describe simple objects in the story helps them produce new vocabulary words. 2. Playing nursery rhyme music at home is another good idea for language skill development, children love to hear music especially ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT, HUMPTY DUMPTY, WHEELS ON THE BUS type of songs and you would be surprised how children remember the words of the song very quickly. Places to find the tapes can be found online such as amazon.com which has good price affordability. 3. Many free online websites I will add soon for preschoolers, have free number, alphabet, shape and color concepts.

I recommend a good site called childcareland.com. This website has numerous activities where you can print and laminate this lessons for your child at home. They are very effective and useful for children to use at home with parents during a mini break or learning with friends at home. The best learning toys are items such as blocks, puzzles, playdough, alphabet blocks, and posters. Preschoolers at this age enjoy learning their basic cognitive skills such as shapes, number concepts, letters, days of the week, months, and primary colors, the earlier the better. Hands on toys are the best learning toys for children, blocks, soft letters and numbers, shapes. 4. Taking your child to the city's local museums, library, or local zoo enhances their learning too. 5. Using playdough, crayons, markers, and paint at home helps the child occupational skills to be developed at a young age. These are some ideas that can be implemented at home easily with parents.
These activities can also be done in a group with family members, aunts, uncles, grandparents, put the activities in a bookbaggy and can be completed anywhere. Try to spend as much time reading to your child and taking them to a near by library, literacy is the root to essential skill areas.

In the math area before I forget, you can buy hands on math manipulatives at very affordable prices with Lakeshore Learning. They are very easy to use and sold at every age level. Try these activities and make a difference in your childs life starting now!!!!