The importance of home learning

Home learning is an important factor on a child’s learning and development, how can parents and settings work together to support this?

Parents are the primary teacher in a child’s life, influencing their thoughts, feelings and experiences in the world. If parents support and encourage their child’s learning at home and at nursery, it will have a positive effect on their development. It is important that practitioners work with parents to support a child and ensure they are both working towards the same outcomes.

Parental Involvement

Research has shown that the influence of parental involvement can have a major impact on school readiness and attainment levels from birth right up to sixteen years old.  The Early Years Foundation Stage supports parents involvement in their child’s development, bridging the link between setting and home learning. Parents that work full time may find it difficult to play an active role in their child’s learning, however the setting can build this involvement through good communication and regular updates such as parents evenings. It is vital that settings work with parents to ensure they are able to access information on their child’s development and any areas that need support, in order to work on this at home.

Activities at home

There are many ways parents can extend and support their child’s learning at home. Minimal input of resources and time can still heavily influence their learning. Easy low cost activities such as regular reading at home or singing nursery rhymes can support children’s basic language skills; whilst offering experiences such as exploring the local community can build a child’s understanding of the world and support a range of areas such as maths and physical development. Some settings offer parents the opportunity to take home activities from the setting such as story sacks, these can be available to the parents to take home and return. It is a good idea to include a reading diary for the parents to make comments on how they used the resource or what the child learnt. Some preschools also offer ‘homework’ sheets. These can be optional, and offer children the opportunity to continue their learning about a particular topic or area, at home. This can help parents to be involved in learning and share best practice with the setting.

Sharing best practice

It is vital for practitioners to encourage parents to share their home learning with the setting. Some settings offer an area in which parents can share their child’s achievements at home with the setting. This can allow the setting to provide next step activities to enhance the child’s learning from the home environment. It is a good idea for settings to encourage this sharing process, in order for both setting and parents to be working towards the same goals for the child. Learning journeys enable parents to observe what their child has learnt whilst at the setting and the ability to build on this at home. Home observation sheets can be included in the learning journeys; these sheets are filled out by parents sharing information on their child’s development at home, with the setting. This also demonstrates good parent partnerships to Ofsted.

How does your setting encourage home learning?