Learning skills are not developed by spending lots of time reading and doing nothing else. Take breaks, get physically active and engage in different types of activities rather than spending all the time doing one type of learning activity. Using different muscles and doing different tasks will help children learn better and be more well-rounded students.
Each person learns in different ways. Though we all learn from each of our senses, each person has a specific way he learns best. Some learn best from listening, and these people are called auditory learners. Others learn by seeing and watching, and are thus called visual learners. Then there are those who learn by touching and moving things around, and they are known as kinesthetic or tactile learners. It's important for kids to have a chance to learn in all three of these styles, but if a child is struggling to learn, identifying which learning style he prefers will help him learn more effectively.
Children develop many types of skills in their early years, and all of these help them learn. The five main types of skills are cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, language and speech skills, fine motor skills and gross motor skills. There is a natural progression for each type of skill, and researchers have identified milestones, or ages at which most children develop each specific skill. For example, the average age a child learns to walk is between 9 and 15 months. If a child is significantly delayed in reaching these milestones, it may be cause for concern, and some occupational therapy may be required.
Cognitive skills are skills we have that help us learn and understand. Concentration is an important one, since paying attention doesn't always come automatically if there are distractions that interrupt it. Perception is about using the senses and interpreting the sensory input. Memory is another important cognitive skill, and there are several types of memory that need to be developed: receptive memory, which means associating physical traits with the item being remembered; sequential memory, remembering the order items are presented; rote memory, remembering by repetition; short-term memory, immediate and lasting only seconds or minutes; and long-term memory, remembering things that happened last week, last month, last year or even longer ago than that. The last kind of cognitive skill is logical thinking, which is also known as reasoning. Each of these cognitive skills is important and needs to be developed to help children learn effectively. If a child's ability in one or more of these areas is underdeveloped, activities that focus on that area can be used to strengthen that skill, much as an athlete will train certain muscles to improve her athletic ability.