As the long summer forces families to mostly stay indoors and young children are even more often seen in front of a digital screen, parents worry about their children forgetting all that has been learnt in school. This can be easily solved by implementing a ‘Learning by Doing’ philosophy for children of all ages.
First proposed by American educationist John Dewey in the 1930s, this theory was a clean strike against traditional passive learning in school. It actively propagated more participatory ways of learning – that is, the theory that children learn better and faster when they are engaged in an activity revolving around what is being learnt rather than just from a textbook.
Although this sounds like common sense today, it is amazing to see just how traditional learning in schools still is. However, homes can re-create this philosophy and ensure that children are engaged in continuous learning, even if they are not aware of it at all times.
Learning by Doing is also called experiential learning – a theory based on the fact that children learn through their own experiences, including coming up with a situation, understanding the challenges to be overcome, and possible solutions, and doing a project which may or may not work out – it is the doing that is important, not the result.
Learning by Doing is popular in the classroom today, with teachers being trained in these methods, time allows. However, how can this be transferred into a home learning context?
Many such opportunities began to be talked about during the lockdown a couple of years ago but continue to stay relevant today. Depending on the age of a child, there are many opportunities to learn just from the everyday routines of home.
A young child could easily learn by simply being asked to take out stuff from the refrigerator – numbers, colours, items, textures and even names of fruits and vegetables are all right there.
The same refrigerator has the potential to teach nutrition, texture, plant life and cooling temperatures to an older child.
Another fun example to introduce physics is to put coins in a paper boat to see how many coins will still make the boat stay afloat. Not only is this a fun activity, as most children love to play around water, but it is also developing multiple skills like mathematical and critical thinking. Of course, it is also teaching kids to make a paper boat.
Other simple ideas to make children learn around the house include planting a small pot to understand plant life – this can be done in the kitchen with sprouts that stay soaked for some time and burst into seeds, making microgreens that are useful to the body – a simple biology lesson.
Even a mundane activity like folding clothes can be a learning experience – teaching children of all ages about fabrics, weaving, and traditional methods of colouring and modern synthetic material.
A quote attributed to Richard Branson says, “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” This summer seems a great opportunity to let children learn by falling and rising.
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