Home Learning Environment
What do we mean by Home Learning environment?
This is learning environment your child experiences at home with their family. ALL parents are educators of their children, and anyone can do it. It does not require you to be ‘the teacher’ or buy lots of resources. It requires your time and imagination and having lots of fun!
Parents are a child’s first and most enduring educators. Parents and families are the most important people in children’s lives. They have the greatest influence over them, particularly in their early years.
What you do at home as parents has a major impact on social, emotional and intellectual development.
Parents who engage in meaningful activities that encourage thinking and talking to stretch a child’s mind as part of everyday life can enhance their child’s development significantly.
Evidence shows that the below activities have the biggest impact on your child’s learning:
- Reading with and to children, and going to the library
- Singing songs and rhymes
- Going out and about on visits
- Drawing and painting
- Playing with friends
- Playing with letters and numbers
The following activities are important too:
- Listening, talking and thinking – using a family’s strongest language(s) from birth
- Doing real things together, for example: cooking, gardening, helping with the shopping
- Letting the children have a go for themselves
- Imagining and pretending
The home learning environment is critical to children in their early years and is where most children spend the majority of their time.
We support all families to create stimulating and engaging home learning environments that supports all children to achieve their developmental targets by offering FREE sessions that you can access within Sandwell.
Play Talk Read Sessions
Family Hubs and Libraries offer FREE Play Talk Read sessions for parents / carers with children under 4 years of age.
Play Talk Read helps to:
- Support parent’s conversations with their child
- Share information on improving language development and self-help skills
- Increase parental understanding of child development and how to support early learning
- Enhance parent’s aspirations for themselves and their child
- Position children to take their next steps in learning and transition confidently from home to nursery to school
Play Talk Read covers what we know makes a good home learning environment and has 3 essential elements to every activity such as sharing and telling stories, singing nursery rhymes & songs and providing ideas for home learning.