How to maximise learning opportunities this Christmas
Christmas time provides excellent opportunities to offer your children extra sensory support as it is simply a true Sensory Feast!
Sensory support is a priority at all times but considering current reality it’s even more important. Sensory experiences relax and soothe children’s nervous system, help them regulate their energy, inspire imagination and creative expression, and reinforce learning. It’s particularly important nowadays to provide more Multi-Sensory Learning to help children cope with anxiety and stress, and to foster their balanced development.
With all the colours, lights, music, smells, tastes, and even snow if you are lucky, Christmas time presents fantastic opportunities for Multi-Sensory Learning!
What kind of learning opportunities does Christmas time support?
Your typical Christmas activities offer a lot of high quality sensory and cross-curricular learning:
- A Christmas Tree Decorating is about touching and smelling, decision making, planning, teamwork, communication. It can even help raise awareness of sustainability, life cycles, and build an understanding of local ecosystems!
- Snow Play supports the development of gross motor skills, whole-body fitness, balance, self-awareness, and manageable risk-taking!
- Music & Singing helps nurtures creative self expression as well as rhythmical, musical and bodily awareness!
- Writing greeting cards and Letters to Santa promotes Early Literacy and fosters clear intentional communication!
- Making Christmas decorations is all about creativity that aids the development of fine-motor skills. It teaches how to choose the right materials and tools, how to design and plan, and it can even help raise awareness of local traditions and regional cultural heritage!
- Story Telling and Story Reading stimulate imagination, help develop children’s understanding of local customs and traditions, historical events, and different perspectives. And it can inspire to pursue personalised explorations even further!
- Cooking and Baking helps with Early Maths & Early Science. It’s all about understanding cause & effect, measuring, weighing, organising a cooking space, experimenting, and basic hygiene and safety in the kitchen!
As you can see, Christmas time can give your children tons of opportunities for high quality learning. Not only is it Cross-Curricular, but it also supports the development of children’s Core Life Skills though hands-on Experiential Learning.
And that is how all children naturally learn to their fullest potential!
With the right kind of framework in place your children can also enjoy Active Experiential Holistic Learning – beyond holiday time!
In our ACTIVE LEARNING BOOSTER online support program for teachers you will learn how to create long-lasting learning frameworks that help you offer Multi-sensory and Experiential Learning on a daily basis.
You will also learn how Active Experiential Learning supports ALL areas of child development, and how to identify learning outcomes for your children in naturally occurring activities.
Decorative elements in photo collage by Kjpartgeter and Freepik.com
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