Increasing Learning While Your Child Watches TV or Videos
Let’s be honest. Many of our kids are going to be increasing their screen time in the upcoming weeks and months. This is the current scene at my house. I’m pretty sure this is her 3rd episode of Brainchild in a row and guess what? I’m fine with it.
This post is about how to sneak some learning time into TV time with your child. I’m not saying that every show or video they watch needs to be turned into a school lesson, but I’m going to give you some suggestions for how you can turn TV or a video into a learning activity if you want to.
Shows are great examples of lots of different emotions and social interactions. Sit with your child and if you see an emotion happening on screen, pause the show and point it out to your child. This could be as simple as saying “Happy!” and smiling while pointing at the child on TV who just got an ice cream cone, or “Sad” and frowning to highlight a child crying on a show. For learners at a slightly higher level, you can add in activities like “He’s sad. Tell me something that makes you sad.” or to complete the sentence “I feel sad when…” For advanced learners, you could try taking it one step further and asking “He’s sad. What is something the other child could do to help him feel better?”
Shows and videos are a great way to work on the language skill of requesting. You can turn a show into a very valuable language practice lesson, but pausing a preferred show periodically and encouraging your child to ask you (to the best of their ability) to turn the show back on. Your child could sign for “more,” point to the TV or the remote, exchange a picture, or tell you with words at their level that they want you to turn it back on. Highly preferred activities and items that are motivating are the best things to use to work on requesting skills. If you have your child ask for a show to watch and then they watch that show for 30 minutes without pause, they had one opportunity only to practice their requesting skills. If you pause the show every two minutes throughout and have them ask you to turn it back on, they will have so many more opportunities to practice.
I stumbled across an awesome list of educational shows in different categories. A quick google search can give you ideas of new shows to introduce to your child. My daughter looooves learning about animals, so we let her watch shows like “72 Cutest Animals” and then we have her practice telling us some facts she learns after she watches the episodes.
Object identification can be practiced when watching shows too! Parents can pause shows periodically to check in with their child about what they see. For early learners, parents could say “hat,” or “who is wearing a hat?” and encourage their child to point on the TV or device. For learners who are slightly more advanced you could have your child try to identify actions or emotions “show me the girl who was running,” or “who feels sad?”
You can also work on comprehension by pausing shows periodically and asking if your child understands what is happening. This activity would be for learners who are a little more advanced and you could ask questions such as “What happened?” to generally get information about a scene or conflict in the show or go even further to have the child practice summarizing a show or video.
These are just a few examples of how you can incorporate learning opportunities into time with TV. Remember that it’s ok to let your child relax with their favorite show or video every once in a while too. When my child is watching a show, it is the time I know that she is the most likely to sit and stay put and safe so I can use the downtime to get stuff done or relax myself for a couple of minutes. If you want customized ideas for activities that you can do during shows or videos, email me and tell me about your child. I’m happy to help you come up with some ideas!