Our children wake up excited and eager to learn with every new day. Whether exploring new spaces, observing a change in the environment or trying out a new activity, everything they come in contact with allows them to discover something different.
This constant exploration that your child experiences through their early childhood development and beyond demonstrates their joy for learning. If you observe and listen closely, you will notice their eyes light up, and a smile comes to their face as they explore a topic of interest or the satisfaction they feel when they can make connections on their own – all of them indicate your child’s love for learning.
Many important figures throughout history, like Barack Obama and Bill Gates, have practised and emphasised the importance of adopting lifelong learning and its benefits. In addition to becoming more knowledgeable and gaining fresh perspectives, it also positively affects brain cells and improves mental sharpness. Read on as we share more benefits of fostering a love for learning in your children and how you can nurture this passion in them.
Benefits Of Nurturing A Love For Learning
Be it pursuing personal interests and passions or chasing ambitions, fostering a love for learning in your child can help them to achieve personal fulfilment and satisfaction. Here are some of the expected benefits of lifelong learning:
- Your child can cope with the fast-paced changes of the world while empowering them with cognitive flexibility.
- It equips them with the proficiency to handle challenging situations.
- Having knowledge and a curious mind improves their confidence.
- They acquire practical life skills allowing them to become good communicators and leaders.
With everything rapidly shifting to accommodate the advancements in technology, it is more imperative than before to foster a love for learning in your children. It is best to foster this as part of their early childhood education since it not only helps them to be on par with everything but also opens doors to a plethora of opportunities in their careers.
How To Foster A Love For Learning In Your Child
As parents, while you can inspire and encourage a love for learning in your child, you are unable to teach it. However, you can do far more good by creating an environment, both at home and at school, to support your child’s early childhood education. This allows them to develop their own ideas, express feelings, make choices and connections, share their opinions and most of all, let them be Champs in everything they do.
1. Develop An Environment For Reading
Reading not only helps your child develop a much richer vocabulary, but it also allows their brain to process concepts and formal communication. As parents, you can help incorporate reading into their early childhood education by having them focus on reading for at least 20 minutes a day. You can also be their role model and actively read around them. Filling your home with reading materials like books, newspapers and magazines lets you create an environment that emphasises the importance of reading.
A key to developing good reading habits is to make reading fun and not frustrating. For instance, if a child decides that reading is boring, they may not want to read, diminishing their ability to learn. Hence, you can let children pick their own books to read and create activities to make reading even more enjoyable.
2. Enrolling Your Child In An Enrichment Class
Enrichment programmes help support the education, cognitive and social development of children, all while introducing them to new activities and hobbies. Through enrichment activities, your children can also develop the right attitudes and skills to achieve their academic goals.
Enrichment programmes can come in different variations, with some of the most common ones being:
- Academic enrichment programmes – these are typically offered through schools and take place as an afterschool activity. In these programmes, children receive advanced academic instructions and lessons that are tailored to their developmental level. Here at MindSpace, we offer a curriculum complementary to that of the Ministry of Education (MOE). Together with a unique teaching approach, our highly qualified and experienced Specialist Subject Coaches create an ideal environment to foster a love for learning in your Champ whilst strengthening their academic foundations.
- Sports and recreation enrichment programmes – these programmes include sports clubs, martial arts programmes and more. With extracurricular activities and sports, your child has an environment to improve their physical well-being and develop healthy habits allowing them to lead a more active lifestyle. What’s more, research has shown that engaging in physical activities allows your child to improve their cognitive health.
- Language enrichment programmes – these include Speech & Drama lessons, public speaking and creative writing clubs. All of which encourage children to further develop their linguistics through reading, writing as well as playing language-based games.
Ultimately, for children to develop confidence and maintain curiosity as well as interest in learning, they have to first feel validated. Parents, schools and enrichment centres should allow your children to feel validated. At MindSpace, not only do we provide a nurturing environment, but our Specialist Subject Coaches also create an open and safe environment for Champs to talk with us openly. We make it our mission to empower them by letting them know that their opinions matter. Through effective communication of ideas and opinions, every Champ becomes a leader and lifelong learner.
Want to know more about our afterschool or weekend enrichment programmes?
Simply book an appointment to visit our centre to discover how we can help your Champ stay ahead of the curve in school!