Parents, do you know child brain development activities you can do with your kids after school? Here's how.
Parents should start teaching their kids as soon as your precious baby opens his eyes, and you continue to teach them right until their schooling years.
It's important to establish good learning habits early, as it acts as your child’s foundation for learning in advanced levels like high school and college.
Child Brain Development Activities To Do After School
The key is giving your child many opportunities to learn, including informal activities that you do for fun. Here are some recommendations on how you can be an active participant in your child’s learning process:
1. Prepare home activities after school
Don’t just rely on your child’s pre-school teacher to come up with homework ideas. Most kids tend to associate activities that require them to sit down and hold a pencil with school, so you should try to make sure your home activities are fun and different from normal school activities.
All kids want to play after class and play is what the home activities should seem like! You can create simple home activities that your child will enjoy after class, before the actual homework!
2. Encourage your child’s interests
If your child is into pets, give him time to play with animals. Show him how PlayDoh works and create clay statues together. While your child is watching, casually start drawing or doodling on a piece of paper to get him interested in writing.
3. Get educational toys
Keep yourself abreast with technology, especially when it comes to educational toys. Some toys are great for older kids, while others are perfect for smaller ones.
Toddlers, in particular, love to touch their toys and stack them, so get blocks and balls of various colours and sizes. They can start on board games as soon as they’re old enough to understand the simple rules of each game.
4. Take your child wherever you go
Many parents bring their kids to the mall or the store every week, while others do this every day. Simply walking around your neighbourhood will expose your child to different sights, improving his capacity to learn more.
Soon, you’ll hear your child mentioning the words on signs and billboards out of the blue. Taking him outside will also help improve his sense of direction.
5. Socialize with other kids and their parents
One of the first things that a child should learn is that there are other children out there and those kids are like him.
As soon as he understands this, he is able to learn from other kids through social interaction. Host or join playgroups in your community.
6. Assign some house chores to your child
Whether it’s arranging magnetic numbers on the refrigerator or organizing the placemats according to colour and shape, you can get your child to help you with some chores.
Expect your child to make a mess most of the time, but at least he's learning something.
7. Record your progress together
Craft a small notebook where you will record your activities for the day. Keeping a journal about your progress with your child looking on or participating as you draw stars beside specific activities can be good.
This is one way to motivate your child to keep learning.
8. Unplug your child
Keeping kids occupied is always a challenge, especially during the toddler years, and many parents are too quick to take the easy route of handing out consoles and new gadgets to their kids.
While many games are educational and your child is probably learning new skills from simulation games, there’s no substitute for real interaction and learning.
Get your kids off their virtual playpen occasionally and encourage them to play with other toys.
Encouraging your child to learn is not difficult because every child is curious and eager to know more about everything. You just have to get the right tools and provide a bit of encouragement.
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