Learning new things is a sign of development. It can be study, skills or any habit. There are many reasons that can make child learning fast and easily. Many scientists have discovered different learning theories and taxonomies. There are many reasons that can make learning fast and easily. I will discuss them one by one.
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Make your Child Enjoy Learning
Montessori Activities can also help your child to enjoy learning.
First thing for us to understand here is, what exactly is learning and how is it happening in children?
So do we learn all subjects and do we get interested in knowing about all gadgets?
So, first thing is learning is about self- belief. When we take up a subject and look at saying, a child needs to learn, what is the child’s self believe around it? What is the child ability around it? Children perceive saying for example we take a Math. A child who has experience and has prior experience when he not perform well he looks at beginning of subject itself saying it is difficult for me. This is anyhow not going to work.
For example a child is very good at science. He will pick up a subject and say science is very easy and I will finish in 10 to 15 minutes.
So it’s about the way that the associates to the subject and the way they think they perform in that subject. So, for us as parents, is to also dig down. The moment we say, he is not able to learn or not interested in learning, it is to dig down a little deeper. Always remember, gold is where it’s darker, it’s deeper.
So we need to ask children, understand from them, what is their association? What is their belief about subject about the way they do it.
So naturally if you ask a child saying
“You are not interested in Math? Why??? You don’t like it or do you like some other subject. What makes you like it and what makes you don’t like it? How has been your previous experience?”
Any of those you know methods which, you get in to understand for you as parent what is their experience and what is their belief around it.
One of the first things would be to see if we re-shift it. I mean if we can realign it into something which is more meaningful which is new.
For example a child may be always scoring low marks in mathematics. Now getting the child to attend many more tuitions is not going to change it unless there is one teacher who is not going to kindle the complete curiosity about math that it’s not about scores. It’s about the things around it.
That moment what they are doing unintentionally, is shifting their association to the subject and creating a concept saying that even you can learn because you know those things. So, for us as parents, it’s important to know that it starts with first creating their first self belief around it. And how do you create that?
It is self-belief happens through our own voices. For example, if you are sitting with a child and you are having a conversation with your spouse saying
“ Math’s! It is always been difficult for me.”
Then without you realizing, that’s going to ring in your child’s ear, when he is going to be doing math’s. He may pick up math’s but he may always have that ringing saying “Math’s is difficult. That’s what mama said.
It’s not that they consciously do it but your voices become a really strong thinking process in their head. It could be as simple as when you make a child to sit down and do science and you tell them saying
“Better concentrate; it’s a very difficult subject.”
Or social studies and you tell them saying
“You need more attention because this is a very BIG subject.”
So whatever you saying, is going to create their self-belief around it and that’s going to have a direct impact on the way they process it, they perform it. So very first thing for us, is start looking at,
Best 3 Activities which encourage Children to Take Interest in Studies
How we speak to them
How we engage them
How we help them to learn
Another important thing for us to understand is
“Can we shift their association?
Like we spoke before, an association could be a person who’s teaching a subject. Association could be the medium. Association could be a way it is taught, the delivery the methodology.
Have you ever seen that a child is not performing so well in one school? At a moment you shift to another school he start performing.
So, do you mean that the child was not a learner before and suddenly became a learner? It could be because earlier the environment was not kindling learning, conducive environment, this one is. There is shift in a way they associate to learning now. It could be because of a teacher. A child may be a very poor at a subject but may pick up a certain liking for a teacher and the teacher would have instilled the confidence. So the word to catch in here is let’s work on instilling confidence.
Encourage Children To Say
Yes
It sounds difficult but we can try? At least, do you want to try with me? Do you want to try with your teacher? Do you want to try with your coach? Whoever it is?
Encourage children and that is going to shift their association.
It could also be a medium.
For example, if they are not able to understand when you are writing it; see if they are able to understand it through a video. See if they are able to understand through an audio. Any of those can click.
Sometimes you are teaching your child for hours, but the moment you give them a sheet to write with the same thing he may pick up in 10-15 minutes, that’s possible. So, where we are heading is to understand that each child also has a different learning style.
Child’s physical, Mental and Emotional Health
You will be thinking how physical, mental and emotional health can make learning fast? You can’t imagine if child is physically, mentally and emotionally healthy his mind work efficiently. He takes interest and concentrate on things.
For example if a child is hungry he can’t concentrate on work .He will be looking for food or he will be thinking that how he can find and eat food. In this case he can’t learn fast.
There is one more example if a child is not feeling good he is ill so his sickness will not support his body and mind to learn fast.
And if a child is sad and you are trying to make him learn new habit, skill or any concept he will never give you positive response. He is not ready to learn.
Make sure that your child should take proper sleep. Proper sleep makes your mind fresh and active.
There is a saying
“Early to bed,
Early to rise,
Makes a man,
Healthy, wealthy and wise.”
Visual Learners
Some students are visual learners who learn through sight. They mostly learn through pictures, flashcards and reading books. They make the same image of letter, number, word or picture in mind through sight and they recall that image while giving answers or giving information.
Auditory Learners
Auditory learners like to learn by listing .So use auditory materials such as videos, poems, audios.
Students don’t take interest in memorizing spellings if you make them memorized spellings as a rhyme they will learn easily and fast as well as spellings will be saved in his long term memory. He will recall poem and its tone and tell correct spellings.
Kainesthic Learners
They learn” by doing” and never concentrate until you involve them in hands on activities. For example you are teaching formation of letter “s”.
You have used flashcards, and played poems regarding s formation but still he is unable to write. So it means you have to give them cutout of letters “S” so that he could feel and trace the letter with fingers. It’s very important for adults to observe a child’s learning style carefully. Adult should use all learning styles for a concept and observe that which teaching resource was useful visual, auditory or kinesthetic.
Being a teacher it his responsibility to cater all children according to their learning styles and use all three types of teaching resources. So that all types of students should get knowledge or skill effectively and quickly.
Effective Questioning Technique
Educationists believe that
“Questions are a key to treasure”.
Effective questioning plays a vital role in acquiring knowledge. It depends upon you how you ask questions. Questions are just like a mind map which leads you to the destination, so appropriate questions at the appropriate time will take you to your goal quickly and timely.
Being a Montessori teacher, there are 3 period lessons through which you can make learning fast and easy.
First Period:
We give knowledge and information in this period by saying:
“This is a “
For example: If we are introducing numbers, then introduce 3 numbers at a time. Show them flashcards of numbers one by one by saying:
This is 1. This is 2. This is 3.
This is a very short period.
Second Period
We make the child able to learn things by asking different questions. We use this period to recognize the letters, vocabulary words, numbers and pictures.
I will take the same example given in the first period.
You have introduced three numbers in the first period and now want to make recognition strong, so ask questions like:
Where is number 2?
Can you show me number 3?
Put number 1 on your head?
Please give me number 2?
Place number 3 on the book?
Place a pencil on number 1?
We repeat the vocabulary words again and again by asking different questions so that the image and name of the number should be fixed in the child’s mind.
This is a long period as compared to first and second period because child learns things in this period.
Third period
We assess a child during this period. We place flash cards one by one and ask:
What is this?
If this gives correct answers then we introduce the next 3 numbers, otherwise we will repeat the send period again until the child recognizes the numbers correctly.
Use of Gadgets
Gadgets like tablets, mobiles, multimedia, computers and laptops have made learning easy and interesting. There are very interesting apps for kids .They learn things through games. They get involved in the concept so much that they play educational games for a long time.
