Top Strategies To Help Children Learn

You started preparing for Kindergarten the moment you enrolled your child in our school. Unfortunately, family members often don’t have the opportunity to see all the amazing activities our teachers do daily. This has left parents asking questions such as “Why don’t you focus on a letter of the week?” Rather than limiting their literacy development to learning one letter per week, children in our schools participate in activities that develop their understanding of letter knowledge, using sound-letter correspondence (phonics), letter formation, putting letters into words, and words into sentences. Teachers do this daily by pointing out important literacy concepts as they teach about letters with programs like journaling, in which children can practice letter sounds in the most meaningful way — by expressing and writing about their own experiences. We provide book kit programs such as our lap book kits for infants through early threes, big book activities and sharing our stories, as well as word-of-the-month activities for our older children. These provide not only the content they will need for Kindergarten, but also the creative thinking skills they will need for a lifetime.

In addition, our teachers select activities written by early-childhood experts. These activities are aligned with math, literacy, science, creative arts, and social studies learning standards. Our teachers choose activities based on the unique needs and interests of the children in their class.

Neurological research tells us that human beings learn best (take in information, remember it and recall it later) when our emotions are involved at a heightened level. This happens when we are invested in, or care about, what we are doing. Our emotions are heightened when we actively play, sing, dance, make music, pretend, explore, discover, experiment, invent, build, and when we express ourselves creatively about the subjects that are important in our hearts and minds. Think about the times in your life when you learned the best, when you remembered the most. Wasn’t this true for you?

Activities that tend to produce less emotional investment for young children include memorizing facts through the use of flash cards, writing in workbooks or on worksheets, repetitive writing of letters and coloring on coloring pages. These activities are not “bad” for kids. However, in our schools, we do not spend a great deal of time on passive activities like these because we do not feel these maximize children’s learning potential, nor prepare them for future academic success.

In conclusion, by choosing our school and supporting your child in developing the above seven traits, you have given your child the opportunity to do well in Kindergarten as well as to graduate from high school, go on to college, and do well in all of his or her studies.