Children’s education is one of the most important investments we can make in society. It reduces poverty by increasing job opportunities, and drives innovation and progress through educated individuals.
It’s also the first time many children spend significant amounts of time away from home, which teaches them independence and self-reliance. It can also help them learn to respect others and their differences.
Social and emotional skills
Children develop social-emotional skills through interactions with adults and peers. This is sometimes referred to as social-emotional learning, or SEL.
SEL includes skills such as empathy, building relationships, managing emotions, and making responsible decisions. It is often taught in schools from preschool through high school, and it is believed to be a critical element of a child’s education.
It is a good idea for parents to encourage their children’s social and emotional development in their own homes. In addition, teachers can promote a healthy environment by creating trusting relationships that are built upon warmth and affection.
Language skills
Developing language skills is important for children because it is a key component of cognitive development. It is also essential for forming and maintaining relationships with others, which can impact social well-being.
Young children use language and communication in many ways, including babbling, responding to their name, laughing, smiling, playing peekaboo, and pointing at objects. Parents can help their kids develop language by reading books together and talking about them.
The Hanen Centre teaches parents, caregivers, early childhood educators and speech-language pathologists how to support children’s learning and language through the zone of proximal development. Research has found that this approach promotes more guided participation and student exploration.
Maths skills
Maths skills provide children with a strong foundation that supports their academic and life success. The analytical skills that kids hone through their early maths experiences are invaluable for everyday decision-making and problem-solving in both personal and professional environments.
Math learning does more than just focus on numbers and counting, but also includes knowledge of shapes, patterns, measurement, spatial awareness and algebra (including patterning). This is a big challenge for young children, and it is recommended to build the big ideas through national professional standards in areas that are mathematically central, accessible at their current level of understanding, and generative of future learning [19].
Even infants and toddlers can develop important maths skills through playing with toys, identifying objects by shape, colour or name and sorting activities.
Science skills
Children’s natural curiosity helps them explore and investigate the world around them. This inquisitiveness can be nurtured as they develop their science skills.
Science process skills are the thinking skills needed to carry out scientific investigations and experiments. These include classifying, measuring and making predictions.
To develop these skills, it’s important to provide a wide range of experiences for children. This means that a project such as investigating snails might happen on different occasions using a variety of materials. This allows children to revisit the project and build on their discoveries over time.
Reading skills
Reading to children builds key concentration and focus skills, and develops their vocabulary. It also helps them to use their working memory – the ability to hold information in mind for short periods of time.
Typical children at this stage can decode unfamiliar one-syllable words and phonetically regular two-syllable words from their oral vocabularies. They can also use the knowledge of letter combinations, root words, prefixes and suffixes they have built up, and clues in pictures and story to read longer words. Ehri calls this a full alphabetic reading stage.
Writing skills
Children need to be able to express their ideas clearly in writing. This requires thinking about the message they want to convey and how it can be structured in a way that makes sense. It also improves their problem-solving skills as they consider how to communicate their thoughts in a way that is easy for others to understand.
Kids who regularly write develop their creativity and imagination as they come up with one-of-a-kind concepts. Frequent writing can help them better process information and helps them recall knowledge for future use, which is essential in exams or assignments.
Personal development
Children’s education plays a critical role in their personal development. It helps them become aware of their strengths and weaknesses, which is crucial to making healthy choices and pursuing their goals.
Children also learn to communicate with their peers and other adults, which is essential for developing empathy. This empathy is a key building block for harmonious and inclusive societies.
Quality child education enhances cognitive development by encouraging guided exploration in familiar environments. Vygotsky suggests that teachers can promote this process by sharing meaningful meanings with their students.