It might seem simple, but consider this classic example of the learning process of children - there’s a hot stove, you touch it and burn your hand. The next time you see a hot stove, you know to be more careful and not touch it. Through using your senses, investigating, and experiencing a situation, you learned valuable information.
Children Use Their Senses To Learn
Children discover many things using this learning process, and they do so starting from a very young age. Babies use their senses to investigate and explore their environments. Babies put things in their mouths to learn about them; they grab onto something to feel it and get information.
They start to take in new data and figure out certain things that will cause other things to happen. For example, when playing the popular game of Peek-a-boo, a baby soon learns what comes next. Then, their worry when you first cover your eyes soon turns into delightful giggles.
Understanding Cause And Effect
Aschildren approach about 18 months of age, they start to get a firmer grasp of the concept of cause-and-effect. Children begin to realize they wield some control over their environment. They start to understand that they can manipulate various items or situations to achieve a specific outcome. Of course, sometimes, their tests and experiments don’t go as they hope, but these are the opportunities where even greater learning can occur.
Learning Through Play
Play provides children with the perfect opportunity for incredible learning, starting from a very young age throughout their childhood years. Children can use all their senses and abilities when engaged in play, including physical, emotional, social, and cognitive skills. Plus, learning through play can help prepare children for the real world. When an activity engages the whole child, the learning that occurs is exponential. Plus, it makes it fun, which means children are more likely to form a positive learning experience.
Enhancing Learning Through Language
As children build on their language skills and grow their vocabularies, even more learning takes place. Around two years old, your child starts to associate more words with objects and people. Their communication skills begin to explode over the next several years. They ask more questions and start using their various language and thinking skills to develop their ability to think logically and reason.
Reasoning And Problem Solving
Of course, even very young children learn about problem-solving; just think about the classic shape-sorter toy and the baby who finally realizes the square shape won’t go through the round hole. But as kids approach their middle-school years and beyond, their reasoning abilities become much more developed.
At this age, kids start to think even more about the “what-ifs” when they approach various situations. In other words, instead of just doing and learning, they are now thinking something through before they start to try it out. When you look back through these main points in children’s learning process, you can see how each subsequent skill tends to build on the one before it.
All of the different aspects of how kids learn work hand in hand, developing as the child grows. Giving your children early opportunities to discover and interact with their environment is essential. Plus, providing them with engaging activities can help them find even more ways to learn new things.
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