How to Add Challenges to Create Learning in Everyday Life

How to add challenges to create learning in everyday life. This is part of a series: How to Extend Learning as Part of Everyday Life Part 3. Effective Teaching Strategies: Creating and Adding Challenges. In this article I am going to teach you how to extend learning as part of everyday life by creating and adding challenges.

How to Extend Learning as Part of Everyday Life

When it comes to bringing learning into the everyday moments of life, there is a simple three step formula I like to keep in mind. This is called the Powerful Interactions Framework.

The three parts to the formula are 1- be present, 2- connect, and 3- extend learning. This third step includes learning and implementing teaching strategies that build on the knowledge your child already has.

It is my goal to help teach you these effective teaching strategies so you can confidently extend learning when those key moments come up in your life. 

Effective Teaching Strategies: Creating and Adding Challenges

Definition: Adding challenges to learning situations by generating a problem, or adding difficulty to a task so that it is a bit beyond what your child has already mastered.

The art behind this is to add enough challenge to interest your child and motivate them to learn by encouraging creativity and experimenting in new ways, but not so much that they become frustrated or repeatedly fail.

This is most useful when your child becomes very proficient at a skill, and then gets into a habit of staying right in their comfort zone with it for an excessive amount of time. Adding a challenge can help reignite your child’s excitement for learning. Again, this one can easily become discouraging if used too often or in the wrong context.

How to add challenges to create learning in everyday life

This looks like encouraging your child to go just beyond what they have mastered. It can be as simple as a reminder or encouragement. Or as complicated as setting up a new game or learning environment. 

This looks like:

• Encouraging a child who can ride their bike confidently, to try taking the training wheels off.
• Showing a child who colors and draws for hours, how to hold their pencil correctly.
• Helping a child who can count to 10, add 11 after 10.
• Teaching a child who loves to write their first name, how to write their last name. 
• Ask a child who loves reading together, to make a prediction of what might happen in a book based on the pictures before you begin reading.