Everyday Learning Opportunities
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In the fog of sleep deprivation and exhaustion, it can be hard sometimes to remember that to your new baby, everything is new. He or she is experiencing everything for the first time, and has a brain like a sponge ? soaking everything in.
Why not take the opportunity to make everyday tasks into learning opportunities for your child? We try to incorporate everything we do into a teaching tool for our little girl. Here are some ideas:
- When you pick up you child, say ?up?. When putting him or her down, say ?down.?
- Point out objects to your child and repeat the name, such as ?bottle,? ?dog,? ?cat,? and, of course, ?Mom? and ?Dad.? You?ll be amazed at how quickly they learn. After just a few times of pointing out the dog and saying the word, ?dog,? we can now ask our daughter where the dog is, and she will turn her head and look at the dog bed.
- At the grocery store, we narrate our shopping trip, pointing out where things are or reading box labels or nutritional information out loud to our daughter.
- At feeding time, we explain to her what we feed her as we feed it to her ? reading the ingredients label on the back of the jar or telling her what she is eating, who in the family likes the food she is eating, etc.
- In the car, we tell her what streets we are on, where we are going, what we are seeing and who we are seeing.
- On walks, we narrate her ride, pointing out a squirrel, or a bird, or a family with a baby.
- At home, we try to read to our daughter as much as we can, even reading the mail to her sometimes. She loves to hear about all the wonderful opportunities we receive for low interest rate credit cards with no annual fee!
MrsH says...
Thank you for these tips, I’m trying to get her to learn to associate words with their meanings. How old is your baby now?