Your Child’s Educational Future: Part #1

It’s never too early to set your child up for a successful educational path and start to develop skills important for your child’s future.  Take a look at a few ideas below that help support a foundation for a successful educational future.  

Discover Your Child’s Learning Style:

Every child learns a little bit differently. What way does your child learn best? With so many different options  in education, knowing which option will help your child learn and grow in the best way to meet their individual learning style needs. Some facilities focus on specific learning styles while others are flexible and use curriculum that are created to reach all of the different learning styles. Lets take a look at the three main types of learning styles so that you can begin to discover in what ways your child learns best. 

Visual Learners: Visual Learners learn best by watching. When retaining information, visual learners create images in their mind to remember things. Your child may be a visual learner if they enjoy doing art and puzzles. They also may remember very specific details or have a creative imagination. They may struggle to follow verbal directions.  Some great learning strategies for visual learners are things like making flash cards or charts. Children who are visual learners will thrive in an environment of print when learning new skills and when following directions.

 

Auditory Learner: Auditory Learners learn best by listening to information read aloud or presented to them.  Auditory learners may remember more specific details when read to or may learn lyrics to songs quickly. Your child may also be an Auditory Learner if they speak out loud to themselves while learning a new task and may be very social. Creating an environment where your child is given the chance talk through activities while learning will help them better retain information. Reading aloud is a great activity that will help comprehension of presented material.

Physical Learners: Physical learners (a majority of male students) learn best by remaining active while retaining information as well as participating in hands on activities.  You may notice your Physical Learner picking up or holding things to examine how they work. They also may seem to be constantly moving. Whether it is kicking their feet in their chair or walking around while they tell you a story, movement improves their ability to retain information.  To help your physical learner succeed, involve them in physical movement to learn.

Children under the age of 6 are typically physical learners, but some acquire different learning styles as they get older. Adjust learning environments based on your child's needs and watch your children flourish! 

Foster Self-Confidence:

Self confidence may be the most important asset towards a path to success. Having Self –Confidence helps children handle tough situations and also supports trying new things. It gives them the mindset that they will succeed and in doing so children are more likely to try harder knowing that they can accomplish new goals and learn new things without fear of failure. To help your child build a healthy self-confidence try to promote independence. When your child asks for help to accomplish a goal, first have them try it on their own or give them suggestions to help instead of doing the task for them. Always follow up with postive praise, "You did such a great job! You should be proud of yourself!". Trust that they can manage on their own and show that you have full confidence that they can accomplish things on their own, no matter how big or small they may be. Next, create an environment to ease anxieties. Setting your child up for success will help to build their self confidence as they will be able to witness their own successes often. This can be done by ensuring that the tasks they are given are achievable but also challenging. If you child does become anxious, talk with them about how they are feeling to ease anxieties. Discussing anxieties together will build skills so that they are able to ease some of their own anxieties in the future and proceed with a greater confidence. Reading books that are examples of over coming anxieties are great ways to initiate this conversation with your children. Finally, being a great role model is the best way you can help to instill self-confidence in your child. Be mindful of how you cope with your own failures and disappointments. Your children watch you closely and live by your example

Teach Motivation:

Strong self-motivation is an important skill for a child to have to be able to achieve sought-after goals. There is a great difference between internal motivators vs. external motivation. We must be careful not to teach children that the only reason to accomplish a goals is because they get something tangible at the end. We want to teach children that pride and satisfaction are wonderful rewards when completing a task. If tangible rewards are included, be sure to first discuss how proud you are of your child and how they may feel about themselves. Internal motivators create the strongest drive to accomplish goals when external rewards continuously need to increase in value and appeal to continue to drive motivation.

Next week, look for Your Child’s Educational Future: Part #2. : Success in School, Understanding the World of Work , Environments To Help Explore Interests and Making Time for Fun. 

 How  you are setting your child up for success?

Click here for more information on Primrose Balanced Learning Curriculum or call one of our schools today to take a tour and learn about how Primrose creates a strong foundation for your child's educational future. If you are a current parent, please let your friends and family know why you have chosen Primrose as the first step in building a strong educational future for your child. We are now enrolling for the 2013-2014 school year and our 2013 Camp Primrose Summer Camp.