Encouraging your child to learn at home

If you ask your child where they go to learn they will most likely look at you rather quizzically, before answering `school of course.` Certainly one would not want to contradict them on this point, but you might ask them whether school is the only place where learning is possible. Certainly their school is well set up to impart knowledge, what with its teachers and classrooms - but does all learning really cease the moment the bell sounds at the end of the day?

The truth is of course that children cannot help but learn, wherever they are. Their capacity to acquire information far exceeds the ability of adults. Just think how they manage to pick up their native languages at home - without any systematic lessons or tutelage from their parents they simply `acquire` the ability to speak. This leads neatly into the fact that the home is the place where children have the potential to learn most of all, though they may need some encouragement to do so. The following are a list of suggestions as to how you can encourage your child to get the most out of learning at home.

1. Read to your child

There are numerous studies attesting to the importance of reading to children - the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and the U.S. Department of Education are just two institutions who have published extensively on this. By engendering a love of reading in your child you will allow them to become autonomous in their learning. By reading to your child they will learn to love and cherish books themselves, coming to see them as vessels for knowledge. By introducing your child to the local library they will be able to select their own further reading, building upon interests, and deepening their understanding.

2. Create a study area for them

By granting a child their own area to study you are informing them that learning isn`t just something that happens at school. You will be letting them know their scholarly activities are important enough to warrant a special dedicated area in the home.
This study area certainly doesn`t need to be a dedicated room (few of us are lucky to have libraries or studies at home!) but can simply be an area in their bedroom, or a section in the living room. It should contain whatever stationary they will need, and whatever textbooks they are working through. It should be a place that the child will be comfortable in, so be open to them wanting to decorate the area with a few trinkets. It will be `their` study area after all, a place where they go to in order to expand their understanding, and work towards their full potential.

3. Discuss what they have learnt at school today

By talking with your child every day about what they have learnt at school, you will encourage them to remember their lessons, while letting them know their school activities are important to you as a parent. Showing interest and engaging with your child as they enumerate the day`s lessons may help increase their own attentiveness during future classes, as they will be aware you will be asking them what transpired during their school-day.
You may want to go through some of their notebooks with them, paying close attention to any comments left by their teachers. If you can see they are consistently struggling with a particular subject, or even just a certain module in their syllabus, you could go over their work with them, and try to help them through their misunderstandings.

4. Congratulate your child with their academic successes

Be sure to praise your child whenever they perform well at school. If they feel you are indifferent to their achievements, they may come to adopt the same attitude themselves; but if they know you will be pleased by their performance they will surely try harder. If they happen to do particularly well in an exam, or ace a piece of homework, perhaps you could make their favourite meal, complete with pudding! These may sound like trivial rewards, but they help create an atmosphere around the home where learning is praised. This in turn will support the notion that the home has many functions, and academic learning is certainly one of them.