Getting kids to enjoy learning

Getting kids to enjoy learning
April 30th, 2008 by Halimahton

Learning should be enjoyable.

Many people have asked us how it’s possible to get children to achieve so early. There’s been a lot of guessing and very few facts, simply because in the past I never liked to talk publicly about the way I brought up my children. I’ve always preferred doing practical things instead of talking, but in any case, I think it’s better if people know the facts, so from time to time I’ll write about various aspects of my teaching philosophy on this blog.

Since there is so much to write about, it would be impossible for me to cover everything here, but I hope and believe that people — especially fellow parents and teachers — will find this information useful. I’ll be writing and talking about my teaching style in more detail elsewhere; this first post just covers one small (albeit very important) aspect of my general approach to teaching.

Let’s now go back to what I said in the opening paragraph: learning should be enjoyable. I started teaching my children from birth, and if you spend time with babies it’s easy to see that they are incredibly curious and receptive to new information. In other words, they want to learn!



If you are able to spend some time with a baby (preferably one who likes you!), here’s something simple you can do to see this for yourself. Hold up a toy in front of him — almost any simple and colourful toy will do — at a distance of about 20cm from his face.

Pay close attention to the way he reacts: depending on his age, he will do anything from focusing on the toy and tracking it with his eyes and head to reaching out and grabbing it.

In fact, if he’s able to, he almost certainly will try to take the toy from you, after which he might manipulate it and study it from all angles, or shake it, or put the toy in his mouth, or drop it, and so on.

What’s the baby trying to do? He’s trying to learn about the toy, of course! He wants to know what it looks like, how it feels, how it tastes, and what happens when he shakes or drops it. The baby is also learning about himself; among other things, he’s figuring out how to coordinate his movements and he’s also developing his motor skills.

Clearly, then, babies are very curious about the world around them. This innate love of learning makes them easy to teach, not to mention extremely rapid learners! Because of this, I consider the first five years of a child’s life to be the most important as far as their education is concerned.

Aside from developing fundamental skills such as speaking, reading, and writing, the first five years are a great time for a child to acquire good learning habits such as a high attention span, a strong bond with their parents/teachers, and a simple enjoyment of learning (whether it be from books, things he’s playing with, conversations with other people, TV, the garden, or anywhere else).

This blog isn’t the right place to go into all these areas in detail (unless anyone wants to read 20,000-word posts!), but I do hope to at least be able to give people some of the general ideas.

Making learning fun for babies and toddlers
“Making” learning enjoyable for a child is easiest if you simply get him to maintain his natural love of learning from his earliest days as a baby. All you have to do is spot the times when he wants to learn (e.g. when he’s showing interest in a toy or person) and then come up with some fun learning activities for him.



Don’t forget that you’re trying to get him to retain his existing enjoyment of learning, so it’s important that he associates learning with positive experiences. Have a sense of fun/humour, and don’t worry about setting goals or targets for your baby; just enjoy the time you spend with your child and seeing him learn for what it is.

Try to keep your learning activities exciting or at least interesting; to do this, you might have to be a little creative in the way you introduce new things to your baby. For instance, simply speaking to him in a sing-song voice will help keep him amused and interested.

Patience is essential. Only teach your baby as long as he is interested in the learning activity, and if he seems to have completely lost interest (e.g. he is looking somewhere else) or is no longer alert, just stop! There’s always another day.

Let’s now talk about what not to do: it’s crucial that you don’t make learning dull, tedious, or overly repetitive for your child, as this will cause him to start associating learning with negative experiences from an early age. These negative associations tend to stick with children for a long time.

Essentially, all you have to do here is not suck all the fun out of learning. One simple thing you can do is to make sure that the learning activity is interesting and pleasant for you, as your child will very often feel the same way. In fact, you’ll often find that you naturally communicate your interest and excitement in the activity to your child.

Making learning fun for older children
Let’s now talk about the case of older children; in particular, children who, for one reason or another, seem to dislike their studies or learning in general. The trick here is to get to know your child well and figure out what will make learning fun for your child.

So what does make learning enjoyable for a child? It depends on the child’s personality, of course, but here are some of the more common possibilities:

The child likes the challenge and resulting sense of accomplishment that comes from learning new things
He enjoys spending time with and/or receiving attention from his parent/teacher/carer
He enjoys learning informally through hands-on activities (e.g. cake baking or upgrading a computer) and/or educational-but-informal discussions (e.g. “why do some people have curly or straight hair?” or “where does the picture on the TV come from?”)
Positive peer pressure: he likes to compete with other children and tries to outperform his peers
His studies are integrated with something he already enjoys (e.g. he can write essays about computer games or see how maths is used in football)
A parent/teacher/carer has made learning fun for him at an early age, and hence he’s come to associate learning with good feelings
He likes to show off!
Which of the above applies to your child? If you’re not sure, it’s a good idea to find out! Here are two examples to illustrate how you might use this knowledge to make learning enjoyable for your child.

Example: Focusing
Suppose your child has difficulty focusing on his schoolwork for very long, but is happy to play computer games for many hours every day. What you have to do here is figure out why he is willing to focus on computer games but not his studies.



If you’ve realised that the challenge-and-frequent- reward system in games keeps him interested for a long time, you could divide his work up into a series of small challenges and give him a reward after he overcomes each challenge. You could give him a sweet for each question he answers, or if he doesn’t even want to get started, reward or congratulate him for just writing his name down!

Alternately — or at the same time — you could offer to let him play games for as long as he likes provided that he finishes his work for the day. This will have the side benefit of helping him understand that doing his work now leads to rewards in the long term.

Depending on the kind of work he is doing, you could try to integrate his gaming hobby into his work. If he needs to write an essay, for instance, you can ask him to write about what he likes about his favourite games or to describe his favourite gaming characters.

If he doesn’t know why maths or physics are useful, you can help him find out how computer games are made so that he can see how these subjects are used by people who program games. Or he might just prefer to use computers in general, in which case you should let him do as much work as he can on his computer.

Example: Reading
If your child doesn’t like to read, there are many things you can do to encourage him. As always, your task is to use your understanding of your child to figure out what it is that might get him to like reading.



The easiest thing to do is to simply let him read about things that interest him. Since there is written material covering virtually every subject known to mankind, this should not be difficult!

Get him used to the idea of reading to find out more about the things he likes or is interested in. If he likes fast cars, ask him if he can find (via books or the Internet) the top speeds of the fastest cars, how cars are built for speed, and so on. You should also try to integrate reading into his daily life — if he’s going to the dentist for the first time, borrow a book on the subject so that he can find out what will happen during his visit!

Some children dislike reading because they can’t see how the text might be interesting or entertaining, especially if they’re reading a book that isn’t illustrated. If this is the case for your child, liven up his reading by acting out the book’s content with him. Be imaginative and read the book with a great deal of expressiveness; if he’s reading a story, make it seem like the story is actually happening in front of him. Over time, he’ll gradually start associating books with the excitement he gets from reading with you.

You might notice that your child likes to do the same things as his peers or the people around him in order to fit in. In this case, you could take him regularly to the children’s section of your local library — initially, he might not read anything, but if he sees that everyone around him is happily reading, he’ll be much more inclined to pick up a book for himself. Encourage him by showing him how to navigate the library to find books about things that interest him; at this stage, it doesn’t really matter what he reads, as long as he makes a start.

Bear in mind the fact that I haven’t covered everything in this example! There are lots of other possible reasons why a child might not like to read, such as being restless or having a low attention span; I’ve only discussed a few of the problems here. Likewise, there are many other potential remedies for reading problems that I haven’t been able to cover in this post.

Posted in Articles, Education & Learning