1. As a parent, guardian or a professional associated with toddlers/pre-schoolers(2 to 4 yrs), you must have found yourself already or increasingly becomimg tuned towards observing, noting & finding children at various levels of knowledge of skills acquired. And you can’t help asking WHY SO? How come one child knows so much about colors/cars/animals/birds/flowers or sings, dances so well & the other ones doesn’t.
2. Talk to them or /their parents or observe the situation closely and you will find that the child learnt/gained by just growing up in that particular environment,. e.g. say a mother with green fingers will naturally be relaxed in the garden & will talk generally in a simplified manner about flora & fauna and the child picks up the concept of colors, names of the flowers, importance of watering plants & becomes sensitive towards nature and when a father cleans up his car on a Sunday morning & engages his little one in a conversation during it, the child picks up on the car- its color, shape of wheels & steering and whatever else he if fed with.
3. Let’s note & pay attention that these children picked up all these not from books but from life situations. The books will take off from there. The learning part is quicker & thorough if done in a STRESS-FREE ENVIRONMENT, Learning should be fun.
4. Here are some of the important points we should keep in mind to give stress free learning environment while dealing with preschoolers to enhance their readiness skills for learning.
– Make children generally OBSERVANT. Play observation games with them. Talk of everyday life situation with them. Life is an open book. Let them learn from it.
– TALK to them, give simple explanations, don’t assume they wouldn’t understand. Enable them to broaden their horizon.
– Make them INQUSITIVE. Ask questions, Invite answers, welcome questions from them & accept their answers.
– Let them be IMAGINATIVE, let them think beyond boundaries. Let them explore & think and read in between the lines.
– Be a bit FLEXIBLE yourself. Accept that there are shades of grey & not only black & white.
– Work upon & enhance their LISTENING SKILLS. Read out stories to them.
Send them to a play school which focusses on learning through play way methods, has a stimulating environment & activity oriented approach to learning.
So dear parents, make a start now. I am sure you will use all those available opportunities & turn them into golden ones. GOOD LUCK !
POONAM SETHI
HEAD MISTRESS
SHEMROCK PRIDE, HARGOVIND ENCLAVE.