5 Essential Tips to Jumpstart Your Preschooler’s Learning Journey

Starting your preschooler’s journey toward life-long learning doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By focusing on a few foundational skills, you can help create a nurturing environment that builds their confidence and helps them prepare for kindergarten. Here are five essential tips to jumpstart your child’s learning journey.  

1. Build Resilience

Resilience is an essential skill that helps children navigate challenges and adapt to new situations. By fostering resilience early, you’re empowering your child to tackle obstacles with confidence and persistence. Here’s how you can nurture resilience in your child: 

• Encourage Problem-Solving: When they face a challenge, take a moment to observe if they can solve it independently, then guide them to think through solutions, rather than stepping in right away. This builds self-confidence and independence. 
• Praise Effort, Not Just Success: Focus on their hard work and persistence, not just the outcome. This helps them understand that growth often comes through trying, even if they don’t “win” every time. Remember, trying new things and making mistakes are how we learn.  
• Model Resilience: Talk about times when you faced difficulties and how you handled them. Children learn a lot by watching how adults react to stress and setbacks.  

2. Develop Social-Emotional Skills

Social-emotional skills are the building blocks of positive relationships and emotional well-being. Teaching these skills early helps your preschooler understand their own feelings and relate to others, creating a strong foundation for future social interactions. 

• Teach Emotion Recognition: Help your child identify and name emotions by labelling them when they arise, like saying, “I see you’re feeling frustrated” or “That was exciting!” 
• Practice Empathy: Use simple scenarios or storybooks to talk about how others might feel, building their ability to empathize and consider others’ perspectives. 
• Encourage Cooperative Play: Set up playdates or group activities where they need to work with others, share, and take turns, which strengthens their social skills and self-regulation. You can help foster peer interactions by assigning a “role” to each child as they play, such as a baker and a customer.  

3. Support Sensory Needs

Every child has unique sensory needs, and supporting these needs can enhance their focus, comfort, and readiness to learn. By understanding and addressing sensory preferences, you’re helping your child feel safe and regulated in their learning environment. Here’s how to support your child’s sensory needs: 

• Observe Their Reactions: Notice if they seem sensitive to loud noises, certain textures, or bright lights. This will help you identify what may be overstimulating or calming for them. 
• Create Sensory-Friendly Spaces: If they’re easily overwhelmed, provide a quiet, cozy area with soft textures and dim lights where they can retreat. If they need more sensory input, consider activities like playdough, sand, or water play. 
• Introduce New Sensory Experiences Slowly: Whether it’s a new food texture or a different kind of clothing, introducing changes gradually can help them become more comfortable over time. You can model interactions with this new experience to show your child that it is a safe and positive experience.  

4. Strengthen Early Literacy Skills

Early literacy skills pave the way for a lifelong love of reading and learning. Introducing your preschooler to books, sounds, and storytelling makes literacy a natural, enjoyable part of their world. Here’s how to foster early literacy: 

• Read Aloud Together: Share stories daily, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Try to make it interactive by asking questions or pointing out pictures. 
• Encourage Playful Rhymes and Songs: Rhyming games and songs help children learn about sounds, which is a foundational literacy skill. 
• Create a Print-Rich Environment: Surround them with books, labels, and letters. Let them see you reading and writing too; this builds curiosity and excitement. 

5. Establish Early Numeracy Skills

Early numeracy skills help children make sense of numbers and patterns in the world around them. By introducing counting, sorting, and basic math concepts in everyday activities, you’re laying the groundwork for future success in math and problem-solving. Here are some tips for early numeracy: 

• Incorporate Math into Daily Activities: Count steps as you go up the stairs, point out shapes at the park, or sort toys by colour or size. Everyday tasks are full of math opportunities. 
• Use Hands-On Tools: Try counting with blocks, beads, or other small items that allow your child to manipulate and understand numbers physically. Have your child tap or touch the items as they count to build 1:1 correspondence.  
• Encourage Pattern Recognition: Patterns are foundational in math. Use items like coloured beads or building blocks to create simple patterns for them to identify and recreate. Start with 2 item patterns before expanding to 3.

When Challenges or Questions Arise

Each of these five essential tips plays a unique role in building a well-rounded foundation for your preschooler’s learning journey.  

If you notice that your child is struggling to build these foundational skills or if things aren’t going as smoothly as you hoped, remember that you’re not alone. Every child develops at their own pace, and sometimes extra support and input from early years professionals can make all the difference. The Early RISErs program is a play-based parent participation program where you get input from Speech and Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, Behavioural Interventionists, and more! Join us just once a week for nine weeks and get expert guidance and a community of supportive parents.  

Learn more about how our Early RISErs program can help your little one thrive! New Cohorts start in January, April, and September and, like all our programs, fees are on a sliding scale based on household income.

– Marlo Humiski, Senior Manager, Early Years Programs

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