Experiential Learning for Your Child is a Vital Tool

Lately, new parents are so competitive and face such social pressure to begin their child’s education way too early. The importance of experiential learning for your child, can’t be understated. It is important to understand that young children need unstructured play and experiential learning to develop to their full potential.

Play enables children to act out alternative scenarios and to find different ways to express social or emotional difficulties. They can learn assertiveness, social skills, leadership qualities and how to solve group-conflict through role-play and using the play space as a rehearsal for real-life situations. It is important for you to use this role play and give your child a turn to do everyday tasks. Experiential learning through role play encourages independence in young children.

Experiential learning for your child enables him or her to pursue their own areas of interest and to work through problems as they arise in a real-life situations. Experiential learning demonstrates the practical uses of maths, for example, two ears, one mouth, two hands and five fingers, how many grapes at snack time and how many block to pick up at tidy time. Science, where we let them hold an ice cube to demonstrate cold or give them their tea slightly warmer than usual to demonstrate how hot can be uncomfortable.

Experiential learning can also be important for letting your child experience the reality of failure and how to overcome these setbacks and challenges. They can feel pride when they eventually find a way to do something because they learned to do it themselves, not because someone told them the answer.

Experiential learning for your child is collaborative and enables her to work out her own unique strategy rather than following a set formula to arrive at an answer. This allows them to think creatively, rather than assuming that all problems have right or wrong answers.

It is very important to realise you can learn from your child too. Some of the most interesting observations come from children because they are still figuring out how the world works and finding their own place within it. After engaging in a rich experience, it is crucial that you help your child reflect on the experiences.

This reflection will allow her to recap what she has learned. Experiential learning for your child is positive and conducive to growth development and it should be a practice that’s adopted both in an institution as well as at home.

Encourage your child to play in the sandpit,  to sort pebbles or to feed a stuffed toy.  Observe this experiential learning and know she is developing exactly as she should be.

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