Children learn new things naturally  – just like breathing. The most natural way to build in any learning is by following their interests. We all learned new concepts as young children by exploring through our interests. Then as adults our interests have generally led us to our careers where we continue to learn new information and skills. Learning is a life-long process.

If your child is having difficulty learning new concepts try delivering it through their interests – what toys do they like? Think how you can make the learning fun. A classic example of this is teaching how to identify emotions to students with autism using Thomas The Tank Engine characters. Games have even been built around this to help parents! “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle is also another classic example of taking a well loved story book and turning it into a card game and board game to help teach days of the week, quantity to 5, growth or life cycles of living things and identifying the category of fruit.

So next time when you are having the ‘homework battle’ stop and think is there a better way my child would relate to teaching them this concept? Learning through play and interaction is going to be more memorable than the set homework activity, and therefore the concept learned and retained better by your child.