The very basics of education for little learners
Things to teach your child at home, to set them up for success at school
People often ask me what I did to get my kids into selective independent schools at 4 years old. There is obviously a range of things (which I’ll continue to touch on) but let’s start at the beginning. When it comes to education, I've always believed in keeping things simple and starting with the basics. Kids thrive on structure, and if you can master that, I believe you're setting your child up for long-term success in school.
I've been teaching my kids the fundamentals since they were about 2.5 years old. The first thing I made note of, was that there were aspects of their personalities which I thought would make that transition to school a bit more challenging
My daughter is a fidget queen, constantly on the move
And my son's attention span at that age was shorter than a Snapchat story.
So whilst I know those quirks are completely normal for kids their age, knowing what I wanted to improve on helped underpin the basics that followed.
Here they are:
Teach your child how to sit down:
Start by investing in a little desk and chair, let them decorate it anyhow they like and pop it in a corner of a room, free of distractions. Ideally, every child should have their own desk area. First, I get them to carry out their favourite activities like painting or cutting and sticking, but all whilst sitting down at their table and chair and then I build it up to more structured activities. Carving out this space, gets them used to and respecting the idea that this is where certain things (educational things) happen and this really helps with that transition to school. Here’s an inexpensive set I like.
Teach your child how to sit still:
As I said my daughter is a little fidget machine. I've tried various tricks to help her sit still (eg. this and all the other little gadgets). Don't get me wrong; fidgeting is pretty normal, and healthy some even say but it can be distracting, for both my child and others. So, I work with her on first eliminating all other temptations and distractions. A clean, empty desk with no TV, no music (unless classical and wordless), and no one chatting on the phone in the background. The idea is to focus solely on the task at hand, ideally until completion. (Over time, I do re-introduce the distractions, because that is a better representation of normalcy.)
Improve their attention span:
Contrary to what Kandi before kids thought, I’m not against TV for kids- I actually believe it helps in improving their attention span- it just has to be the right content. So I moved away from letting them consume short-form TV content (YouTube) and moved to more long-term content like movies and educational shows.
To help frame, a general rule is that a child's attention lasts about two to three times their year of age. So a three-year-old would have attention span of about 6-8 minutes.
When I have them doing activities, I use that as a baseline but my personal aim is to get to at least 4 -5 times their year of age. It may ebb and flow, but the hope is that over time, it’ll rapidly improve.
Teach your child how to hold a pencil:
In the beginning, I can't even count how many times my kids' pencils hit the floor. I started making them aware of it. And then after I’d reminded them enough times, I moved to a three-warning system - if it happened three times in ten minutes then…actually, I don’t know what happens haha because we never got there- but you can make up your own gentle system. As they got older, I’m pleased to say the warnings have become less frequent, dare I say rare and the benefit is that it greatly reduces distraction!
Watch their hands:
Tied in with the previous point is this one. When they've got one hand holding a pencil, that other hand can easily grab all sorts of distractions (and trust me, they know how to find them). So where should that extra hand go?
I say, right on the paper. One hand at the top of the page keeping it steady, whilst the other hand does its thing.
I also teach them, that if they’re not doing an activity but they’re sitting down listening for example- their hands should be visible on their desk and their eyes should be looking at the person or thing that is talking. Because we know that wandering eyes and hands are a recipe for chaos.
I actually took time to teach them these things way before I started prepping them for school assessments and it made it that bit easier to introduce the educational stuff when it was time. So my conclusion is; provide structure and reduce distractions. I believe this helps them to receive and retain information and imo it makes for a smoother transition into the education system. 📚🖍
Bonne chance