For the most part, education starts at home. As parents, you are the first individuals your young children will learn from and be influenced by. Your role as a teacher and guide is something that you will have to fulfill for many years, all the way from birth to early adulthood and potentially beyond.

You won’t be doing this alone, of course, as there are many different teachers your child will meet along the way who will provide them a more formal education. However, you’ll still likely have a role in helping the teacher in this regard, whether it be helping with homework, giving advice and motivation, or giving additional aid where needed. 

Here are some practical ideas you can try out at home when your child is learning writing and spelling.

Providing Motivation

One of the best things you can do to help kids at a young age is motivate them. This can be done in a few different ways.

Doubling down on lessons learned at school can help immensely. One of the more common – and easiest – things you can do is help sound out words. Using short and simple words that eventually evolve into phrases can help establish early pronunciation and word recognition skills. Encourage your kids to write out and use the words they learn in little stories.

Another thing you could try is word repetition. Speak and write certain words that they might find tricky, and have them mimic and repeat after you. Adding onto this, you could write out letters that match the pronunciation of those trickier words to better reinforce letter, word, and sound association. This can be made easier by pointing out similar words, like pop sounds like hop, mop, or cop.

Gamify the Learning

There is a lot to be said about using technology in education. Many make the argument that some subjects in school have become redundant. Others agree that technology has helped both make teaching and learning more accessible and provide more distraction.

There are many different apps and games that help make this learning process more attractive to children born into this technological age. You can then help further by creating puzzles outside of technology use based on the games they might like to play. This can also help maximize the advantages of screen time.

Gamifying learning ultimately makes it far more engaging for the child.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Some other ideas you could try out involve being artsy and crafty. You can have your child draw pictures of activities and then describe the image in writing. You could do a similar thing by cutting up old magazines for a collage instead of drawing.

Encourage writing notes and letters and describing and writing stories as a form of practice. Make sure to provide corrections for them to practice as they practice and develop their skills.

Concluding Thoughts

You can do a lot to help your children with their learning and develop their foundational skills by taking a small amount of time out of your daily schedule to help your child by giving them a little boost.