Best Way for Kids to Learn: Just Let ‘Em Do It

Attention parents: Do you want to make your preschoolers smarter? Try this pop quiz:

What is the best way to teach your children common kitchen terminology? (A) Drill them with flashcards. (B) Point to a spoon, a bowl, the oven, and slowly repeat the name of each. (C) Bake a cake.

The correct answer--C--might seem ridiculously obvious. Now, a $3.75 million federal study is about to confirm what parents have long suspected--that kids learn best by doing, particularly when they don’t realize they’re being taught.

For the past three years, researchers have visited parents in eight states, observing daily activities and asking questions about family rituals, vacations and other everyday events.

Although two years of study remain, the research strongly suggests that ordinary activities such as going to the park, shaping Play-doh or accompanying a parent to church may offer the richest learning opportunities for young children.

“People get hung up on coming up with activities instead of taking advantage of naturally existing opportunities,” said Carl J. Dunst, a North Carolina psychologist and principal investigator for the study. Mary Beth Bruder, director of the Division of Child and Family Studies at the University of Connecticut Health Center, is the other lead investigator.

Researchers, who are focusing on children with disabilities, hope the results ultimately will be useful in improving teaching methods for all children.

As part of the study, a researcher accompanied parent Lorraine O’Brien and her daughter, Kaley, to a Gymboree class and to a preschool program sponsored by the town’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

In addition, O’Brien spent hours describing visits with Kaley to the supermarket, to a Halloween parade, to her older brothers’ soccer games, to Walt Disney World and Cape Cod.

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On Easter, for example, Kaley, who is 3 and has Down syndrome, joined her four brothers and four cousins in an egg hunt. All the kids wore Irish sweaters knitted by their grandmother.

The activity may teach Kaley about teamwork and about the ritual of Easter. Picking up eggs may refine her small motor skills. She might even learn something about her Irish heritage.

“You forget all the things you do,” O’Brien said. “Then you realize you are helping her in more ways than you expected.”

In addition to teaching parents how to take advantage of learning opportunities at home, Dunst said, the research is designed to show preschool teachers how to better connect with children, especially those with disabilities.

Children with developmental problems receive early intervention through a program known as Birth-to-3, during which specialists such as speech and physical therapists work with them at home.

The researchers compared the relationship of children’s everyday experiences with what the teachers were doing during home visits. “We found a tremendous mismatch,” Dunst said. And oddly enough, the researchers found, the teachers had a lot to learn from the parents.

“It’s doing things they enjoy, it’s not, ‘Sit down and stack your blocks,’ ” said Cindy Mazzarella, a research assistant with the University of Connecticut Division of Child and Family Studies.

“Though we were examining how children with disabilities learn, we also had a sample of typically developing children and what we found is equally important to them,” said Bruder, a professor in pediatrics at the university’s medical school.