Power Of Play Defining Learning Journey Of A Child

Learning, the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught. It’s a process that is marked by various events in the lifetime from childhood to adulthood. Being a parent, it has always been a cause of worry on how will I contribute to my child’s learning experience. How can I enhance my daughter’s journey for holistic upbringing? With so many thoughts nagging my mind constantly we decided to let the journey be full of adventure, full of discovery and not fast at all.

It’s a known fact that young minds are very naïve and can be molded the way we want them to be. However, as parents when we mold our child we keep long-term benefits in mind. These benefits come’s by integrating information through experiences, practice, self-correlation with the help of tickling memory cells. It’s very important that we realise for a child learning would be more easy and helpful when they learn in a fun way. When their fingers and hand muscles are involved as that has exceptional retention value in the mind.

The parental approach towards learning plays a key role in developing a child’s mind and rooting it towards the strong foundation. Hurrying and hushing the child towards learning won’t help at all. As rightly mentioned in the poem Ithaka by C. P Cavafy, it’s better if the learning lasts for years as when you reach old age you have wealth of experience and everything that you have gained in the process. And this is what is important. Similarly, when we shape the future of our child or design the map of the learning journey it becomes critical that we focus on steps that they take to gain knowledge, learnings they have to undergo to reach a certain level.

Recently I was teaching my daughter who is in Jr Kg about before-after numbers and missing numbers. I realised when I tried to force her in remembering the number before and after each other she couldn’t recall them when asked suddenly. But when I asked her to start counting the number from 1 when she misses something in between that is when she could master the art. The process of counting it all, again and again, is indeed lengthy but we understood that its totally worth it for her to have string retention and learning that will stay with her forever. During this process, she tried to put things together, made mistakes along the way but ultimately learned from them.

It is the route that we take which decides how the learning journey of your child is. As mentioned being a mum I am always on the lookout for ways in which I can instill great learning in my daughter. My daughter gets extremely happy when she is voluntarily involved in the activities which are meaningful and purposeful as well. We inspire her in the direction where we provide her right tools that help her in developing new and brushing up existing skills.

We found her true calling and happiness when she is around toys that make her think and apply her mind to creating something new. And every time she accomplishes something she is elated and wants to show us. Having an explorer in the form of my daughter at home we see unique and creative stuff being made.

Also, while we are helping the child develop new skills I strongly feel we should never force them to do something. Learning always occurs when children engage voluntarily in purposeful activities. So, if we give them a series of the right tools, they are sure to journey through all areas of learning with great gusto and enjoyment arriving at answers at each stage on their own. I have realised that for young children, true happiness comes from doing an activity, not completing it and finding an answer. Their focus is always clearly on the process and not the outcome.

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Having patience and determination is the key for all the parents out there. We cannot expect the child to learn something in one day. As I said it’s a process that will gradually evolve and take shape. Every child is unique and different from the other. The way they start and move through the journey of learning can differ.

Learning can never happen in the single effort. Understanding even one small concept requires a child to go through various steps. Recently I came across Skola toys that take children systematically through a series of experiences that are incrementally challenging enabling them to discover and learn something new at each stage. Every stage is facilitated by a toy playing with which will allow children to challenge themselves in an interesting way.

Just life is a journey in itself and it teaches us something or the other daily. Similarly, the child is not stuck at one point of journey he or she may be at any point wherein he/she is trying to hold a pencil, or write alphabets/numbers, learning to read a simple 3 letter word, using her/his hands to make something creative or being aware of various causes or its effects.

An example of a learning journey is: