To help your child feel competent and confident, we have back-to-school tips and products to help you and your youngster get ready for the year ahead—feeling good and ready to learn!
3 Tips to Get Kids Excited for School
In the days and weeks leading up to school, build the momentum for learning:
1. Foster creativity, joy, competence, and independence.
- Encourage your child to select his school belongings and decorate them to reflect his personality. Pride of ownership—and the desire for self-expression—goes a long way!
- Let your son or daughter help plan, shop for, prepare, and pack snacks and lunches. This teaches responsibility and sends the message that even small stuff takes time and planning.
2. Fill your child’s world with learning opportunities.
Naturally pique curiosity--Hang maps on playroom or family-room walls, leave magnifying glasses outdoors, or place stick-on letters inside the bathtub.
Promote new interests: If your child is into music, play favorite tunes as she sets the table. Have a budding scientist? Create a “wow-I-didn’t-know-that-moment” by leaving illustrated guides to trees, insects, or birds in the car.
3. Provide a steady diet of rich stories, poetry, and works of wonder.
- To ignite imagination, boost vocabulary, nurture communication skills, and build character, provide more than just “stuff” to read.
- Leave different types of books around your home for your child to find and wander through at his leisure.
- In the car, try classic fairy tales. Look for books with entrancing illustrations that will keep your child from begging for your phone.
- Place a favorite childhood book of yours on a living room table. When you “catch” your curious reader picking it up, share memories of reading. Repeat often.
- Stack joke books in the bathroom and turn those “lost” moments into pure delight.