From birth to age five, your child is learning and developing faster than at any other time in their life. These early experiences lay the foundation for your child’s educational journey and who they’ll become as adults. By taking an active role in your child’s education, you’re helping them build a lifelong love of learning and reach their full potential.

Here are six ways to support your child’s learning and development:

1. Talk, read and sing to your child every day.

These activities will help your child’s language development while also strengthening your bond. By engaging with your child through conversation and reading books
together, you can help build their vocabulary, stimulate their imagination and encourage them to explore ideas and concepts.

2. Point out colours, shapes and objects in the world around you.

Helping your child notice and name things around them supports their early object recognition and categorisation skills. You can also help them identify patterns and shapes, which lays the foundation for early maths skills.

3. Help your child learn how to count and identify numbers.

Start with simple counting games and activities, such as counting how many steps it takes to get to the car or how many red cars you see on the way to childcare. As your child gets older, you can move on to more complex concepts like adding and subtracting.

4. Encourage your child’s imagination and creativity.

Creative thinking helps children problem solve and understand the world around them in new ways. Promote your child’s creativity through arts and crafts, with make-believe play or simply by encouraging them to come up with their own stories.

5. Let your child explore new things on their own.

Don’t always hover over your little one. It’s important to let children have some independence to discover and explore things for themselves. This helps them build confidence and independence and learn how to cope with new situations. Of course, you should always be nearby to lend a helping hand if needed!

6.Be a positive role model for your child.

This means setting a good example by being kind, respectful and empathetic in your interactions with others. By modelling these positive behaviours and values, you can help your child become a well-rounded individual who values learning, growth and healthy relationships.

Keen to learn more about how you can support your child’s early learning journey? Discover 10 fantastic activities to extend the childcare educational experience at home.

Staying up to date with your child’s educational journey at Learning Ladder

Learning Ladder Connect—our secure, login-based app—helps you stay connected with your child’s educational journey at Learning Ladder in real-time. Our educators will upload your child’s daily information, photos, reflections, term goals, curriculum plan and observations to the app. Learning Ladder Connect also enables you to share photos and updates with your child’s educators. To learn more about Learning Ladder Connect or our high-quality educational programs, please get in touch.