10 tips to support my child’s learning at home

How can you support your child’s learning at home in the early years? Read these top 10 tips for parents on how to support a child’s learning outside nursery.

How can I help my child learn and develop at home?

1. Read together

• Literacy is a fundamental part of your child’s learning at home. Reading to your child on a daily basis greatly helps your child in all areas of learning.

• Showing your child the pictures of a book and turning the pages is a great opportunity to bond with your child, while also enhancing their awareness and understanding of books. 

• Reading is also a good chance to wind down and relax in between other activities.

2. Prepare your child for nursery each day

• Speaking to your child about what they’re going to do at nursery can help them get involved and look forward to their day.

• It’s a good idea to get them thinking about what’s to come. It gives them a chance to prepare and get used to the routine and structure that nursery provides. 

• This can also help to prepare your child for starting school and following a more strict timetable. 

3. Replicate nursery activities

• Repeating activities or tasks that your child has carried out at nursery helps support a child’s learning at home by reinforcing what they have learned.

• This also gives you an opportunity to bond and be involved in the activities taking place at nursery.

• You get the chance to learn directly from your child. You learn what they have enjoyed and things they might like to do more of. 

• Children are supported to develop personal, social and emotional skills at nursery. At home, this can be as simple as teaching your child to share sweets with other family members and take turns with others. Children also practice personal hygiene at nursery such as hand washing.

• Children can develop social skills at nursery such as empathy, which parents can teach their child about by talking to their child about other family members’ feelings.

4. Keep physically active

• When it comes to supporting your child’s learning at home, physical activity is a great way to keep a healthy body and mind. Children should ideally engage in some form of exercise every day.

• Physical activity builds strong bones and muscles, helps to control weight and improves mood and sleep quality.

• Children can develop gross motor skills. This can be done by helping them develop balance, coordination and using movement like running, jumping, hopping and skipping. You can go for a walk with your child. Let them run around the garden or park, practice baby yoga and play physical games e.g playing with a ball.

• Young children also develop fine motor skills. They can do this by learning to hold and use small tools like pens, pencils, paintbrushes, knives, forks, spoons, scissors etc.

5. Sing and dance

• Music is good for the soul and this applies to children too. Nursery rhymes are really good for this as they have lots of action and every parent knows one or two nursery rhymes by heart.

• Listen to a family-friendly playlist and try a song and dance routine with your child. Not only will this be great fun for all the family but it can also be good exercise too.

• You can use every day items, e.g. saucepans, to create musical instruments.

6. Imaginative play

• Imaginative play is a great way to get children to express their creativity and have a certain level of autonomy over their play time.  Role playing is a common activity at nursery which you can encourage at home.

• Give your child a doll and they will often take on the role of parent for the child by pretending to feed the ‘baby’ or change their nappy. You could use soft toys to set up a zoo or host a teddy bear’s picnic.

• To boost a child’s numeracy skills, you could set up a shop with tins and packets from your cupboard and writing out a price tag for each. Use spare change and a pot, so children can count any money handed to them. If they are a little older, they can try to work out how much change they must give back. You can get the whole family involved as customers.

• Once these scenes are set, leave it out for your child who will love to go back again to play with it.

7. Cook together

• Cooking engages all of the senses – seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting.

• Doing this with young children provides them with fabulous sensory input. It is really important for brain development. Cooking with your child can be lots of fun and relatively stress free with a little preparation.

• Choose a time when your child is not overly tired. First thing in the morning or after naptime works well, if they are younger.

• Help your child feel the ingredients with their hands. You can measure the ingredients needed for the recipe. This way they are learning measuring and numeracy.

• Children love to mix and stir so be sure to include mixing and stirring in the cooking experience.

• There will be a mess, but this is part of the process too. Get them to help you to clean up.

8. Start gardening

• If you’re lucky enough to have your own garden space, let your child do some digging and planting.

• You could create a part of the garden which is just for them to create a mud kitchen.

• For rainy days or if you don’t have access to a garden, consider growing your own herbs like cress and indoor salad. There are plenty of websites for you to look at for this.

9. Learn another language

• Learning another language is a great thing to do whilst your child is young. Many nurseries actively encourage bilingualism. They do this by introducing languages such as French to the early years curriculum to help boost a child’s brain development.

• There are numerous children’s books available for parents to introduce a child to another language.

• You can learn a new language alongside them through online courses which you can sign up to. There are also fun games and songs in different languages.

10. Take inspiration from nature and the world around them

• Remember that learning isn’t just about structured teachings in the classroom, there are opportunities to learn every day.  

• You can take a walk outside. Draw inspiration from anywhere, such as walking past a muddy puddle or pointing out a spider’s web.

• Use the internet to look for unusual animals or sea life. Talk to your child about the creature. Use their imagination to recreate the animal or create their own mystical animal using crayons, plasticine etc.  

Carrying out all these activities with your child can help them become more independent. They will grow in confidence as well as having lots of fun at home.