Childhood can be a time of fun for children, but it’s also a time of learning. It’s always beneficial that those around children try to help facilitate their learning to their best ability, but how do you do that?

Carefully choosing and prompting your words can help to facilitate learning, support rich thinking, and support conversations about deeper topics. You can do this by asking purposeful questions that prompt your child to make connections between an event or experience in the past and current events or experiences in the present. 

Try to start with just one or two questions once a day, overtime these types of questions will feel natural to ask. Intentional teaching practice can significantly improve the quality of learning, now matter how old you are! Here are some prompts you can try out:

• Is this what you expected to happen? How so?
• Would you like to share your ideas?
• How did you figure that out?
• Take a moment to think, and let me know your thoughts 

If you want to keep reading, click here! 

Kaitlyn Vitucci, Research Assistant UConn KIDS

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