When children become preschoolers, it’s an exciting time for both them and their parents. It’s an age where they not only learn to make decisions but feel good about making those decisions as well.
A lot of adults don’t realize how important their role is during this stage in a child’s life. While your child is learning about the world around them, your job is to help them explore their environment and take initiative. An adult’s behavior, attitude, and style of thinking all contribute to a preschooler’s development.
There are constantly new studies being done on how important the early years of life are for healthy brain development. While this increased awareness offers a lot of information, Providence Children’s Academy realizes that it also leaves parents with a lot of questions as well. The question that seems to keep coming up is how preschoolers learn.
Understanding How Preschoolers Learn
A common question asked is how exactly the early years are linked to healthy brain development in children. Simply put, this is a period in a preschooler’s life where their brain is rapidly developing and absorbing information like a sponge.
Essentially, it’s where the foundation for several skills like language, social interaction, and basic cognitive abilities are formed. This means that positive experiences and learning opportunities during these years go on to impact their readiness for formal education.
An easy way to help our children develop is to create an environment that encourages exploration and aims to unlock their curiosity. It’s a simple trick that allows us to turn something that the preschooler finds interesting into a cognitive, social, emotional, or physical exercise.
Preschoolers learn in several ways, namely:
- Through playful exploration
- Building trusting relationships with adults
- Repeated hands-on experience
- Predictable routines
- When interest is sparked
Once we fully understand the ways that preschoolers learn, we’re able to adapt our spaces to support their growth.
1) Playful Exploration
When watching children play, it’s easy to assume that they’re just having fun. However, what they’re doing is learning. There are three main categories of learning, and play incorporates all of them!
We understand that this may be a difficult concept to understand, but the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights even lists play as a children’s right. Through different activities, play has the ability to help your child develop physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally.
There is a long list of simple yet effective play activities that can help support your children during this exciting developmental phase in their lives.
2) Building Trusting Bonds with Adults
One of the main ways that children learn is by exploring the world around them. However, to do that, they need confidence in themselves as well as a safe place to express their emotions. Did you know that a positive, trusting, and responsive relationship with an adult can get them to that point?
Believe it or not, adults play a huge role in learning through play as well. By watching the child’s development, you’re able to introduce new materials and ask them prompting questions to further their learning.
Apart from cognitive learning, building trusting relationships forms a large foundation of social and emotional development. It’s most likely going to be the template that they use with other interpersonal connections and one that they may even carry into adulthood.
3) Repeated Hands-On Experience
If you have a preschooler, then you would’ve seen them do the same thing over and over again without getting bored. Have you ever wondered why that is? Well, it’s because they’re actually learning.
Learning is all about making the connection between ideas and using existing knowledge to make sense of something new. This looks different depending on your age, but to preschoolers, it’s all about repetition.
Through repetition, the children make an observation, ask themselves questions, and then test the theories. As a parent, you could ask questions or start conversations that help make these connections.
4) Consistent and Predictable Routines
When you think about it, preschoolers have so little control over their lives. We mean, at such a young age, this only makes sense. However, by creating and sticking to a predictable routine, you’re able to give them a sense of control and promote autonomy.
While some believe that a routine is too rigid, not having a routine has shown an increase in behavioral problems and distraction from learning. It also allows your children to practice moving from one task to the next. For example, they’ll know that before eating a snack, they wash their hands.
Teaching a child about routine is always going to bring a positive outcome, one that will help them later in life as well.
5) When Interest is Sparked
It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that children learn best when their interest is peaked. Finding something interesting not only catches their attention but keeps them engaged, hoping to learn more.
Let’s be honest; even as adults, it’s difficult to concentrate on a boring subject. So, you can only imagine how difficult (or near impossible) it is for a preschooler’s little mind!
What you may find interesting is that routine could help with this area of learning. By allowing time in a child’s routine for ‘free play,’ you give them the opportunity to do exactly what they want. This gives you an opportunity to learn more about their interests and how you can better help them learn.
Preschool And More In Coconut Creek
Preschool marks a time of learning for a child. However, it’s also a time of learning for the adults in their lives as well. After reading how preschoolers learn, it’s not only clear why these early years are so important, but also just how important your role as their parent or guardian is as well.
Children learn in several different ways, and creating an environment that promotes that interest in learning can only benefit your preschooler.
Creating a safe environment that encourages children to ask questions is something that our staff at Providence Children’s Academy takes pride in. Our children always come first, so call us today at (954) 570-6914 for all your child daycare needs!