Why It’s Important for Your Kids to Learn Outside the Classroom

We send our children to school to be able to maximize their understanding about life and all it entails. Remembering where you were at school, how much did you learn? What lessons stuck with you the most? Most of us can’t remember too much about those early years but we do remember things that our parents taught us at home. When we asked questions about Christmas, they told us the story. When we asked questions about how we were born, they answered in a child-friendly way.

Not all education comes from the classroom, and that’s why it’s so important that as a parent, you keep up with their interests and learning around their schooling. Education is so much more than learning by rote, too. Children learn by doing and that includes learning how to care for themselves, their surroundings and more. You’d teach them all about what Independence Day was for, and you can do it all with your own knowledge or with resources and tools from Learn Bright. There are so many options out there for teaching children outside of the classroom so it’s important that you understand what their school is already covering and then build out some external lessons from there. You want your children to have a say in their learning, too, which is why it’s vital that you talk to them about what they love to learn. There are always going to be less than favorable subjects, but the more you communicate to them the better off you’ll be when it comes to imparting some knowledge. So, why is it so important that your children learn outside the classroom? Let’s explore some of those reasons below:

1. You can help them improve their current grades. While the learning outside the classroom may not be formal, it doesn’t mean that it won’t help them in the classroom arena. The more they understand outside the classroom, the more that they can bring with them to it. Children can share their knowledge with their peers, enabling them to recite their understanding. Questions that come up during tests will also be easier to answer because they developed their understanding outside of the classroom.
2. It’s a bridge to learning more. Let’s say your child has asked about Independence Day and you’re teaching them all that you know. They could discover a passion for learning more about that topic and choose to explore further in a college or school environment. You can really foster that passion of theirs and help them to learn over time outside of the classroom, which could be a life-changer for the children.
3. Skills development. Children who are able to identify topics that make them happy and expand their learning over time can develop their skills at the same time. This will help them to grow their independence and take ownership of the things that they love to learn the most.
4. They’ll love to learn. Not every child responds to a schooling environment. It just is the way it is: you can’t expect every child to engage and learn the same way, right? Well, if you help your children to learn outside of the classroom, you get to make it relevant as well as engaging, helping your children to fall in love with learning again. This will help them to expand their horizons and want to learn more.
5. You can nurture their creativity. So much of school work is bland learning by rote. They’ll learn the things that they need to learn but not all of it is exciting. When you teach outside of a classroom environment, children get the chance to build their creative thinking and do more things that make them get messy! You want your children to be messy – they learn when they make those messes and that’s the kind of fun learning you want your children to be a part of.
6. You can inspire your children. Motivation isn’t easy to come by and if we all relied on motivation, nothing would get done. However, if your children love to cook and you are getting them in the kitchen and getting stuck in, you’re going to give them that motivation to cook and create. This is going to stick with them for life!

When you give children the chance to learn away from sitting in front of a board all day with other children, you give them a gift. Learning outside of the classroom offers so much to children and it’s not until you watch them soak it up that you really understand it.