We all want our children to succeed, and it can be very tempting to push academic as early as possible. While there is nothing wrong with singing the ABC’s and practicing counting your crackers at snack time, the things that set kids up for academic success later on might surprise you. Read on to see examples of three things to work on with preschoolers, other than early academics.
Fine Motor Skills
Are you looking towards the day when your child will write their name, or start tracing letters? It might surprise you to know that the best things you can do to support that don’t involve writing at all! Fine motor skills (using smaller muscles to make precise motions) can be developed in many ways. Your child is probably doing many things every day that practice their fine motor skills! Arts and crafts are somewhere that it is easy to see these skills in action. Practical tasks like doing up buttons or zippers are another. Many ways that kids naturally play, such as blocks, or picking up pebbles outside all develop the same muscles they will one day use to write.
Gross Motor Skills
Gross motor skills are bigger motions that use larger muscles. Your preschooler has worked pretty hard at these already in their short life! Things like sitting, standing, and walking are great examples. These years are your prime window to focus on these sorts of motions that they will use for the rest of their lives. They are such common movements that we rarely think about them, but having good control of your body and moving it confidently benefits us in so many ways throughout life. You are helping your child develop strength and health for one. You are also making them less likely to be clumsy, which will make their lives both easier and safer. As well, if they do injure themselves one day, they will heal faster.
You can develop these skills by giving your child plenty of chances to move and play. Most children will do this naturally. They need to run, jump, climb and throw; and not just to burn extra energy. They are also learning where their bodies are in space and what they can do with them. So if you are ever worried that you aren’t doing anything productive with your child when you head to the park, keep this in mind!
A Love of Books
Reading is an incredibly important skill. It is no wonder that it is one of the things that parents are most anxious to have their child learn. It feels like younger and younger children are being expected to try and learn to read. Oddly enough, this isn’t the solution to raising readers though. By far the number one predictor of whether a child will grow up to be a reader, is having a parent who reads to them.
Does that surprise you? Not teaching them to read, simply reading to them. My personal theory is that it primes them both with a love of stories, and with a firm association between books and how much you love them. Books will forever be linked with the time you spent with them.
Did any of these surprise you? This list is a very basic starting place, and I will add more in another post in the future. It often surprises people though to find out that so many of the things you are probably already doing with your child can have such a lasting impact! We can so easily doubt ourselves with our children, and feel like we aren’t doing enough. I hope I inspired you to confidently run, jump, play, build, craft, and read with your child. You are building the foundation for both a happy, competent child and a strong base for academics when they come. Right now play is their work, and it is too important to rush through.
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