Copied from "The Educated Child" by William Bennett

It doesn’t take a million dollars and a college degree to get your child off to a good start. You, as the parent are the most qualified person to teach and guide your young child, because they are a part of you and they love you.

Your child needs 5 things before they start to school. 1. Your love. 2. Protection and Care 3. Your time 4. A positive learning environment 5. An attitude that values learning and strong moral training.

Your Love, Protection, and Care

Newborns are fragile and helpless. They need adults to supply food, shelter, warmth, and care. But meeting their physical needs is just the start. To develop well, children need a family. A commitment from at least one responsible, caring adult is crucial. Obviously, having 2 parents is the best!

Your child needs to feel loved and cared for and that they can trust and depend on you for nurture and protection. The bond between parent and child has a powerful effect on education. Children who feel loved are more likely to be confident. They want to explore the world. It increases a child’s eagerness to learn new things. For example, a child wants to learn to read in part because they want to please their parents, whom they’ve seen reading, and who encourage their own efforts to read.

Children need to know that no matter what happens in their lives, someone will look after them, keep them safe, and show them the limits of good behavior. Love and learning go hand in hand.

Your Time

The best way to show your live and help your children learn is to spend time with them. Shaping good attitudes and habits take time. Setting good examples take time. What about quality time and quantity time? Some parents believe that they can spend fewer hours with their children so long as they put that shared time to good use. Children do not flourish on small, concentrated doses of attention from parents. They need your frequent company if they are to learn from you. When it comes to teaching and learning, there is no substitute for lots of time together. Your presence in their life is proof you are interested and that you care.

Much of your time with your child may also be chore time. You need to get the oil changed, rake the yard, take out the trash, etc. The good news is that these chores also have teaching value. You can turn many household routines into good learning opportunities for your child. Children learn a lot in your company if you simply talk to them as you work. Explain what you are doing. Tell them why you are doing it. They’ll pick up lots of vocabulary words and absorb knowledge about what things are and how they work.

Writing a grocery list can be a chance to practice recognizing some letters of the alphabet. Cooking involves weighing, measuring, counting, and grouping. Laundry can be a sorting game.
Daily routines can help them learn organizational and problem solving skills. They can learn the value of planning ahead. They gradually learn that every large job is really a series of smaller tasks. They see that work is a means to an end. When they help, they learn about teamwork.

Character lessons seep in also. By watching you, they learn about sticking with a task until it’s finished. They see how to perform a duty thoroughly and responsibly. They begin to learn the satisfaction of a job well done.

Keep talking to them.   You can make chore time a teaching time and make it enjoyable for both of you.

A Positive Learning Environment

You need to give your child experiences that pique their curiosity and supply knowledge about the world. Make sure they have interesting things to do. They want to go out and explore the world.

Expose your child to a wide range of experiences. Take them on errands with you. Go meet your neighbor’s new puppy. Let your child run up and down a hill.

Go on field trips. Go to a museum. Go to the airport. Go to the country. Lie on your back and watch the clouds. Read all sorts of books to them.

Introduce your child to different people. Point out the policeman, fireman, postman, etc.

Choosing Toys that Teach

Simple toys do the best job by putting their imaginations to work: Balls, blocks, cups, pans, simple puzzles, a sand box .

Construction paper, scissors, crayons, glue, buttons, etc. are fun to use.   They would like a basket of grown-up clothes or costumes .

The more toys you buy, the more you see sitting untouched in the back of the closet. Too many toys is not a good thing.

An Attitude That Values Learning

Your good example is the best value to teach someone to value learning. Your actions speak louder than your words. Enthusiasm is contagious. Ask a child questions about what they are doing. Answer a child’s questions. Introduce your child to a new book or a new game. Playing with your child shows you care about them.

Early Moral Training

Children who already know about responsibility, self-discipline, and perseverance before they start to school has a good shot at doing well in their studies. If they show up in class with bad habits such as laziness and disrespect for elders, there is little teachers can do. An education disaster is already in the works.

We don’t expect preschoolers to be little angels. All children test boundaries.   You are responsible for how your child acts and behaves.

You teach good character is several ways. You do it by your good example. As you do, so will your child do. You talk to them about good and bad behavior. Little children need to be told about right and wrong. When you are silent about this, don’t be surprised when they grow up with confused notion about how to conduct themselves.

Parents can talk about good character in the context of every day actions, as well as in stories they read to children. They can talk about it in the context of their faith. Which for most of us serves as the bedrock of morality.

Many parents are not sending their children to school well behaved, ready to work hard, and respectful of adults. Some kids have the attitude, “I don’t have to listen to you. Just because you’re an adult, you don’t have the right to tell me what to do.” Some children think they are in charge because they don’t have that structure at home.

How Young Children Learn

1.       Children need to be healthy, rested, and well-nourished. They need a balanced diet, abundant exercise, and enough sleep. They need regular medical checkups. Children need immunizations to prevent diseases.

2.       Children come into the world programmed to imitate. Your child copies what they see and hear. They pay attention to your words, behaviors, attitudes, moods, habits, and priorities. They observe how you treat other people, how you spend your time, how you go about your work and meet your obligations.   These are powerful lessons. They shape your child’s behavior and attitude, including their attitude about learning.

You teach by example, not simply your words, but also your actions. Imitation is perhaps the most important way a child learns.

You will fall short occasionally. When you do, acknowledge it to your child. Help your child learn from your mistakes by being honest about them.

3.       Reading to your child is critical. As a parent, you have a lot of skills, ideas, facts, and lessons to teach your child. If you want your child to become a good student when they get to school, get them excited about books. Read aloud to your child. If you do nothing else, read aloud to your child.

4.       Too much TV interferes with learning. TV is one of the most destructive influences on education. It saps time from other activities, like reading or talking with their parents. Reading and talking to their parents is much more beneficial to children than watching TV. Sitting in front of a TV all day breeds intellectual lethargy and a couch-potato physique. Establish good habits and firm rules now. Set limits. Some people recommend NO TV at all for children under 2 years of age. For older preschoolers, no more than an hour a day is recommended. TV should not be a constant babysitter.

5.       Children need practice and routine. Doing things over and over is necessary and fun for young children. They don’t get bored with repetition. Routine is important for little children, in part because it provides the repetition necessary for learning. It is crucial in developing good habits.

6.       Children need to ask lots of questions and get your answers. Asking questions is the most obvious way that children learn. When children ask “Why” or “How”, this shows an emerging interest in reasoning. They want to understand the way things work. If you take the time to answer their questions, their sense of curiosity and desire to explore will be heightened. If you ignore them or act disinterested or act bothered by their questions, you may squelch their urge to learn. It’s ok to say, “I’m busy now. I’ll answer that question later.”

7.       Little children don’t think like you do. They don’t think rationally. They don’t reason like you do either. Sometimes, you are required to say ,”No” and realize there is no point in trying to reason with them about it. They can’t understand your logical explanations.

8.       Direct experience is critical. Adults have all sorts of abilities we take for granted when facing a new situation. We rely on past experiences, reason out an answer to a problem, picture a solution in our minds, or grasp new ideas through print. But for young children, these mental abilities don’t exist or aren’t fully formed. Preschoolers rely on direct experiences to gather knowledge. They learn through their bodies, by seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling things that are physically present.

9.       Trial and error are a big part of learning. A child’s day is full of mistakes. That’s one of the chief ways they learn, since they are trying so many new things for the first time. Each time they fail, they learn something new. One of your jobs as a parent is to show your child the right way to do things. Give them chances to try on their own, even if you know they’re not going to do something correctly (unless it’s harmful or unsafe). As they get older, urge them to keep trying when things don’t go right the first or second time, because perseverance is the key to a great deal of learning and living.

10.   Play is the business of childhood. Children get the knowledge about simple things such as colors and numbers by playing. It gives practice to a lot of skills that adults take for granted. Play encourages exploration. It exercises growing bodies and imaginations. Play makes learning fun. During preschool years, a great deal of learning comes through just having a good time.

11.   No two children grow exactly the same way. Even among siblings, there is a wide range of growth rates. Don’t be too pushy.   If you are pushing your child before they are ready, you may be doing more harm than good.