Making Learning Meaningful for Your Young Child

Making Learning Meaningful for Your Young Child

You are your child’s first and most important teacher.  Every day offers new learning opportunities through the people your child meets, the places you go, and the situations that occur.  Use those opportunities as ways to connect your child’s learning to the world around him.   Encourage play with your young child as she discovers the world.  Sing songs, play with blocks, and fill your child’s life with bright colors and sounds.  Talk with your child at every opportunity to facilitate language development, and if you are bilingual, speak both languages to your child interchangeably.  Even though constant talk may seem silly, verbal interaction with your child is vital to language acquisition.  Provide your child with many hands-on play things to assist in developing her fine motor skills, even if it is as simple as a pot and wooden spoon as she learns how to create her own sounds and music.  Using every chance to broaden your child’s learning and development through even the most simple of things is the most valuable thing you can do for your young child.