From Couch to Coach

A feature article by keen2learn, Apr 12, 2008         

The biggest concern of most parents as their child goes to school is how are they are going to cope. Suddenly you are reliant on third parties to handle a crucial role that could influence the entire future for your child.

The intimate bond with your child is interrupted; your omnipresence substituted for a class of around 30 children of mixed ability, and a school teacher who is frequently overworked, stressed, seeking alternative employment or early retirement.

Hardly conducive to a relaxed state of mind, but there is an extremely practical role parents can take to support their child and teacher.

The teaching resources used at school are carefully selected as part of the lesson plans, mainly taking the form of educational games or educational toys they have the significant advantage of being equally valuable as learning resources for use at home.

A search of the web reveals the range of fun based interactive learning games available on-line. These can be used to support the early years as a primary classroom resource through to the finals in high school. Children being able to play for example a constructive maths game at home benefit significantly from the opportunity to practice the school lesson with their parents. This family approach to learning maintains the involvement of parents in any number of lessons using educational games, toys, educational software and puzzles.

The link between home and school becomes dynamic rather than a once a term or an annual event, and playing the games at home reveals the progress being made in English, math, science, reading, history and geography far better than a couple of sentences in the end of term report. The regular content check by parents using a game provides a map where help is needed and a search of the web for educational games reveals the teaching tools available.

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Practice helps learning retention, building the bedrock that provides encouragement, enthusiasm and knowledge back in the classroom. The additional teacher resource that emerges provides a multimedia approach to learning. This can positively modify the engagement towards their studies that can alter a child’s perception of learning.

Being regarded as fun generates a natural interest from children. Using educational toys and interactive games provides the chance for children to excel. The chance to beat parents, siblings and peers is far more enjoyable that the chore of conventional homework. Studies become more enjoyable and progress at school benefits from the increased team strength of child, parent and teacher. Governments in many countries are concerned at the lack of material progress in schooling standards. Maths and literacy in the west display declining trends despite huge corrective investment over the past 10 to 20 years. Yet in the Far East educational standards are improving. The key is the different approach from parents; in the east they see it as their duty to maintain a level of active involvement. The outcome is a substantial improvement in exam results compared to the UK., and the USA.

The choice is open, do we provide extra resource that is great fun to significant benefit of our children and their teachers or believe that it is all down to others.

You can take a look here if you want to view the range of educational games and toys from keen2learn used by teachers in school.

Alistair Owens created Keen 2 Learn in association with his son. Their combined experience in marketing training and web site development focused on the opportunity create a web site aimed at supplying the best teaching resources to teachers. But this is only half the story for the opportunity for parents to use these same educational games at home represents a huge benefit for children and teachers. The interaction at home provides the best opportunity for children to practice and improve their learning retention.

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