Q: What resources available to help my kid learning by themselves?

Encouraging your child to self-learn involves more than throwing an education app on a tablet. While there are many great applications and games designed to help your child learn, the best way to motivate your child to learn independently is to begin with hands-on teaching.

Make learning part of your family life. If hands-on or self-directed learning is part of your child’s everyday life, they are more likely to being directing their own education independently. Always find learning opportunities in your daily activities, such as labeling fruits and vegetables while grocery shopping with your toddler or having your older child help with writing the grocery list.

Figure out your child’s learning goals and interests and make the task of learning fun! Create a reading challenge to motivate your child to read books – perhaps a reward for every 10 books read. You can create other challenges such as how many facts your child can find about a certain subject by researching on the internet.

Allow your child to make mistakes as they self-direct their learning. Try not to micromanage their efforts by organizing the learning process or correcting their approach. Also, keep in touch with their progress and show an active interest in what they are learning.