As busy parents, it's easy to feel that school and home are separate entities, particularly regarding your child’s learning. You drop your child off at school, their teacher supports them with everything they need, and then they come home. In many ways, that is true, and when children do come home, they often need downtime or have extracurricular clubs, which are all equally important.

However, even with a full schedule, there are many subtle but vital things at home you can do to support and supplement your child’s school experience, enhance it, and help them reach their potential while making it a happy and positive experience. So, if you’re looking to support and supplement your child with school learning at home, here are five small but mighty ways you can.

1. Read

One of the most valuable things you can do as a parent to support your child’s learning is to read to them. Reading is like a giant portal for your child; when they can read proficiently, they can access almost anything in any subject, and you can help them get there.

For the youngest learners, reading to them each day provides new vocabulary and helps them hear patterns of repetitive phrases. This supports phonological awareness and their early reading journey. As your child moves through school, reading helps them build a solid understanding of sentence structures, spelling, punctuation, and grammar that they will use in their writing.

Reading to your child each night also highlights its place in life and becomes a solid part of it, making it more likely that they will enjoy reading throughout their lives and continue to reap the benefits of doing so.

2. Encourage Curiosity

Life is full of interesting opportunities, and each one will somehow positively impact your child’s education. Whether it’s getting involved in a community project, taking a trip to the beach, or just spending time together in the garden or local park. Anything extra you do will present something your child hasn’t seen or considered before.

Spending time together exploring the world has various benefits; it will bring about new conversations and, most likely, more vocabulary. It will allow children to ask questions, including questioning, reasoning, and hypothesising why something has happened. Often, new experiences provide time and space for children to navigate and work things out for themselves and subconsciously engage in trial and error using persistence and resilience, each of which comes in handy in the classroom when they can’t solve a Maths equation.

Lastly, accessing opportunities to encourage curiosity doubles as quality family time. Children who feel secure in their family relationships are much more ready to learn in school.

3. Harness Technology

Whether you love it or hate it, technology has a huge place in today’s society, and this generation of digital natives will use it academically, socially and almost indefinitely in their future careers.

While many online games are unsuitable for children, there are as many activities and apps that help them grow mentally and academically. Often, your child’s school will have a subscription to specific sites that support their in-school learning, and it’s a good idea to engage with these, but if your child is struggling with times tables or is passionate about learning a new language, there’s an app for that!

But technology isn’t just about screens and apps. Providing opportunities for your child to explore photography, record their music, and create stop-motion animation will help them develop a set of lifelong transferable technology skills.

4. Support Mental health

We live in a world where mental health is at the forefront of many people's minds, and many children, including young children, are suffering and struggling with the world around them. It can be a significant worry for parents and hamper their child’s time at school. Children are not ‘ready’ to learn if their basic physiological needs, safety, relationships, and self-esteem are unmet. If they feel too much pressure and don’t know how to deal with it or have problems with their friends, they will not care too much about what is happening in English, Maths, or History.

Although supporting your child’s mental health indirectly relates to helping children at school, doing so will make them more ready to take on whatever life (and school) throws at them and give them a toolkit to get by. Listening to your child’s problems and providing careful advice when they’re young, no matter how trivial it seems, will mean they will continue to talk to you about their more significant problems when they’re teenagers.

5. Take an Active Interest in School

School plays an enormous part in your child’s life, and they spend much of their time in that establishment, living and breathing the school day and everything it represents for them. As that child’s primary caregiver, taking the time to know what’s happening validates their purpose in being there.

Each school sends home information about learning that term, so take an active interest and ask questions. Each child will come home with reading books and homework to supplement their class learning, so do it with them or be there if they get stuck. Each school has open afternoons, performances and celebrations of learning, so be there with a smile on your face. It may not seem like much to you, but it means the world to them. Taking an active interest impacts their attendance, focus, and behaviour because they feel secure in their place and learning.

Although it may often feel like school and home are separate, there is so much you can do to open the door and allow continuation between the two settings, which invariably boosts your child’s experience in both. It doesn’t need to be planned and heavily resource activities; it’s mostly about being there.

It’s also essential to remember that you, as a parent, can support your child’s academic journey, whether you feel equipped to do so or not. You are confirming that school is important by being there, listening, and taking an interest.

Author: Hannah Harding