Help your child to become a good learner
Mensa's Gifted Child Consultant Lyn Kendall (pictured right) has come up with nine great ideas for parents to help their children get the most enjoyment out of learning
- Talk to them from an early age - children can understand a lot more than they can express and they develop language skills by listening to others around them. Our education system is based upon imparting knowledge using language.
- Listen to them - children need to develop good listening skills to succeed in a classroom. You can model what they need to do by setting a good example.
- Teach them how to fail - it's all right not to know everything and it's all right to get things wrong. If people were born knowing everything we wouldn't need schools.
- If your child asks you a question answer it with a question - having someone give you the answer teaches you nothing. Replies such as: Tell me what you do know about that. How do you think we could find out? Why do we need to answer this question? Will be of more benefit.
- If you don't know, say so - but then follow it up with, 'But I know how to find out'.
- Swap knowledge and information with your child. Explain that what you learned at school is different to what they are learning now. That both are equally valid and interesting.
- Make learning fun and make learning at home as relevant to real life as possible. Children spend a lot of time in school. They need the opportunity to practise what they have been learning.
- Moderation in all things is important - all study or all tv will not produce a child that loves learning. Variety is the spice of life. Keep learning varied.
- Let children have experience of good and bad materials - children learn to appreciate quality by experience and comparison.
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