Written by Katie Crouch, Senior Lecturer, Researcher and Consultant in the Early Years

Due to Covid and subsequent home-schooling, we have all become aware of the pressures faced by families when trying to support learning in the home. Now that schooling and home learning are becoming separate entities again, we look at how we can build healthy routines and home learning habits.

How can we as adults help our children to develop a love of learning outside of the school environment? In fact, the learning which takes place outside of the school can often hold a deeper sense of meaning and understanding for many of our children and this leads to question why this could be the case?

In my experience, it is down to just a couple of simple factors;

• Learning away from school can have fewer boundaries, such as time constraints.

• Children are also more likely to feel emotionally safer with their significant adults and fewer opportunities for self-comparison with peers.

In this blog I will look at how we can maximise children’s learning potential within these circumstances.

No doubt there will be factors discussed withing this blog which may resonate with your own experiences of learning. Therefore, my first question you as you read this would be, ‘Do you remember what table you were on at school?’ This may conjure names such as colours, shapes or indeed animal names. However, regardless of the name, such as the ‘Red table’, or ‘Ducklings table’, over the years, we will have become aware of whether this was a table for the higher, middle level learners, or those who needed a little more support to build their understanding.

Children are no different, I have experienced children in their reception year of school telling me of their position within the class dynamics. Often this was with a sense of pride or gut wrenchingly low self-esteem. This can be extended further if schools have visible target charts or graphs displaying who does the most reading.

Children are surrounded by these dynamics and self-awareness each day they are in school. If not handled sensitively this can lead to self-limiting thoughts and perceptions of ability. Therefore, learning away from the school environment can be empowering for many children. Within this nurturing, and cognitively safer, environment children can feel empowered to ask questions, and to seek support when they are feeling challenged. This can also be why children may become more emotional when trying to undertake home learning tasks with you. They feel safe to show you this, whereas this may not be the case within school, which can lead to a lack of confidence or increased frustration and displaying disruptive behaviours. This can include children who may be high achievers academically but may struggle when negotiating social situations with peers. You child may need to use you to help unpick some social encounters from their day. If a child is struggling to process a difficult interaction, this will have an impact on their ability to focus on the task at hand and to retain new learning.

For generations we have used the term ‘homework’. This word alone can provide barriers to tired children and their adults who may have both experienced long days already. Why should these tasks and challenges be constrained to the home environment? We know that family lives are becoming busier, how are we able to add additional aspects to an already full day?

How can we feel motivated and patient enough to support learning at the end of a long day? Here are some tips that I have found to be helpful for many families I have worked with over the years.

Step 1. Be active straight after school

Consider this, you have just finished a 6-hour day filled with a constant and heavily workload, with endless meetings and encounters with people who may, or may not challenge you. You have been in the office most of the day and some days you haven’t gone outside once. How are you feeling? Mentally drained? Full of pent-up energy? This is the same for our children.

If you drive to get home, the last thing children want is to start their homework straight away. In the same way we would not want to start working as soon as we arrive home. As adults, many of us may go for a walk or visit the gym after work to form a transitional space. This is when we allow ourselves a change of headspace to begin to leave the stresses and challenges of work behind us rather than bringing them into our evening.  By enabling children to be active straight after school allows our children to do the same and build a transitional space of their own. This doesn’t have to be overly long, just enough for them to feel that they have had a change of headspace and release of pent-up energy. This could be taking a longer, more scenic, walk home, or completing an assault course as part of the journey to turn it into a game. For example, eight star jumps between lamp posts, or setting up an activity course in the garden. This can be great as it has an end point and helps children who may find transitions challenging as it naturally comes to an end and prevents the ‘five more minutes’ discussion.

Step 2. Snack and discussion

As mentioned before, children will seek your support and value your opinions around difficult interactions and challenges. Depending upon their age this will be through various manners of communication. Children may show you their frustration through their actions or re-telling a story from their day. They are doing this to invite you to help explore these situations together. If a child has had a difficult interaction it can stay with them until the next day and this can have an impact upon bedtimes, their sleep quality, and their anxiety about the following school day. This is heightened further when children become young adults and have the added pressures of social media.

By providing a communal snack time soon after the school day can allow these conversations to occur naturally earlier in the day and prevent flash points at bedtime. Healthy nutritional snacks can help rebuild children’s energy levels in a stable manner and also provides a focus for the children. This can make difficult conversations or information sharing easier. Think about times when you might have a difficult conversation when walking alongside or driving. This is because there is less visual information to process when not looking at someone directly, therefore it is easier and more freeing to speak openly. The dynamics of a communal snack time allows this for children and helps them to know that this is a time when they can share their concerns and questions with you.

Step 3. Ask the child to show you the tasks

As the snack time draws to a close you can use this time to move onto the home learning tasks for the day. You will already be comfortable at a space suitable for working like a kitchen table or breakfast bar. You can begin to lead the conversation by asking questions about the day and the home learning. This could be reading, challenges or tasks given by the teacher. Ask the child to introduce task of the day to you. This helps the child to feel empowered and an expert in the learning which has been introduced earlier in the day or week at school.

Remember, you are not expected to have the knowledge of a Year 6 teacher who has been in the profession for 10 years. We may also feel our own anxiety about our own learning experiences as children. Methods of working may have changed and evolved since our own schooling. Through asking the children to show us their understanding and explain to us the methods they have been taught helps to raise their confidence. This is both empowering and fun for children as they are teaching us! Be sure to point this out to the child. You could even use this as a role play opportunity. By praising your child’s ability to be a great teacher, you are helping to raise their self-confidence and self-perception. This also allows us to understand the methods they are being taught at school for different subjects, from blending and segmenting of sounds, to how to carry out long division. Enabling your child to feel like an expert teacher, mathematician, or scientist helps to support their aspirations and using this language helps to form their own self-talk, the language they think to themselves, about themselves as individuals. Consider, they will be hearing this language for the entirety of their lives, so we want this to be self-positive and kind, rather than self-deprecating and negative.

Step 4. Reward and praise

Show the child through your words and body language that you value and enjoy the time with them. It can become a real high point of both of your days. You will find out more about the child as a person and their days at school. If you have learned something from the child celebrate this with them, again this helps to build their confidence and self-esteem in a way which promotes a love or learning and in turn will be more confident in taking on academic and social challenges in the future.

Step 5. Help is out there!

At times, you may find that you both reach stumbling blocks. Help is available. BBC Bitesize is a great website, along with subject specific websites. I have spent many hours researching quadratic equations in the hope to support my own children. Your child’s teacher will also be happy to explain methods and aspects to you when possible. By asking them in order to help you to help your child, it empowers your child to feel safe in asking for additional support for themselves whilst in class. Learning isn’t always easy, showing your children when you are challenged by learning concepts too can help your child to feel safer in their own challenges and potential insecurities.

If you experienced your own learning challenges as a child, you will have formed your own strategies and tricks to understand and remember concepts. This is now your superpower. Share these strategies with your children. This may be the exact thing they need. How many of us still spell ‘Wed-nes-day’ mentally when writing it down? Be proud of how you have over come your own challenges to learning, share this with your children. This may be exactly what your child needs to hear. They look up to you, so sharing that you have had to overcome challenges to learning also gives them a licence to share their own challenges along with the knowledge that this too, with your support, can be overcome.

Ultimately, a love of learning isn’t something which might come naturally. It happens within supportive environments and because of the people around us. Providing a relaxed, safe atmosphere and culture of exploring together can become a bonding and learning experience for all. Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but making your child’s time following school, fun, active, social, nourishing and nurturing, can unlock your child’s potential, self-esteem and empower them to be their best selves.

While you are here we have lots more blogs on various topics which you can find here, as well as our downloadable webinars on topics such as behaviour and emotions, sleep and toilet training.

Don’t forget that we offer parent consultations should you need support with anything from sleep to behaviour and so much more! Details of the packages we offer can be found here.

We also have a Podcast ‘Newborn to Teen and Everything in Between’, you can listen here.