Home Learning Activities Research Articles

An early parenting intervention focused on enriched parent-child interactions improves effortful control in the early years of school.

This study examined long-term mediating effects of the smalltalk parenting intervention on children's effortful control at school age (7.5 years; 2016-2018). In 2010-2012, parents (96% female) of toddlers (N = 1201; aged 12-36 months; 52% female) were randomly assigned to either: standard playgroup, smalltalk playgroup (group-only), or smalltalk playgroup with additional home coaching (smalltalk plus). Multi-informant data indicated that smalltalk plus had unique indirect effects on children's effortful control, through parents' capacity to 'maintain and extend' children's focus during joint interactions. Possible mediating pathways via parent verbal responsivity, home learning activities, and descriptive language use were not supported. When parents received a structured playgroup program with additional home coaching, sustainable benefits were evident in children's self-regulation, assessed in the early school years.

Home Learning Environment and Screen Time Differentially Mediate the Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Preschoolers' Learning and Behavioural Profiles.

Environmental variables related to the home context, including home literacy and numeracy, screen exposure and Socioeconomic Status (SES) are potential risks or protective factors for children's academic achievements and behaviour. The present multi-informant study aims to contribute to this issue by investigating SES's direct and indirect relationships in early learning (i.e., literacy, numeracy, and cognitive) and behavioural skills within a large sample of young children. One parent and one teacher for each of 1660 preschoolers filled out a questionnaire investigating SES, tablet and TV use, home learning activities, behavioural problems/strengths (parents' questionnaire), and children's learning skills and behaviour (teachers' questionnaire). Results of path analysis showed that tablet time and home learning environment mediate the effect of SES on early learning as assessed by teachers; as for the home learning environment, it was also a mediator of the relationship between SES and behavioural problems. Implications of these results for research in the field and educational policies are discussed.

Pelatihan dan Pengenalan Dasar-dasar Bahasa Inggris untuk Tingkat SD dan SMP sebagai Upaya Meningkatkan Kualitas Berbahasa Inggris pada Usia Anak-anak

English is a very vital language to learn. In the Indonesian school curriculum, a student's ability to communicate in English is one of the skills that must be developed. This is because later students can encounter learning that uses this language and it becomes additional value for the students' abilities. The aim of this activity is to train and introduce the basics of English for elementary and middle school levels as an effort to improve the quality of English at the age of children. The stages or steps of the activity are as follows: 1) discussion with the activity implementer regarding the concept of the home learning program. In this discussion, the activity organizer determines the theme, schedule and location of the program; 2) consult and seek approval with the Village Head regarding the program to be held; 3) make activity brochures to distribute. Here the official schedule and location are determined; 4) ask permission from each head of the region where the study house is being held. The location of the program was implemented in Pandan Wangi Village, Jerowaru District, East Lombok Regency with a sample of five hamlets, namely Batu Bawi Bat, Batu Bawi Timuk, Penyambak, Pengansing, and Belatung hamlets; 5) location survey for implementing home learning activities in each hamlet; 6) socialize the home learning program to every elementary and middle school level in the five hamlets while distributing brochures; 6) start implementing the home learning program which is held every afternoon from Monday to Friday in five different hamlets; and 7) evaluation and discussion of each program result that has been implemented. Service activities that have been carried out include: 1) introductions using English; 2) learn the use of this, that, these, and those; 3) learn the pronunciation of the alphabet; 4) introduction using English; 5) study noun material; 6) study subject and pronoun material; 7) learn the pronunciation of numbers 1-10 in English; and 8) evaluation. Based on the description of the activities that have been carried out, it can be concluded that: 1) the focus of the service activity program is to improve the quality of human resources through language learning, both among village children and teenagers. Making the joint learning program a successful program to increase the interaction courage of village children as well as increasing children's interest and awareness in learning English as an international language has shown the success of the initial planning for implementing service activities; and 2) the obstacles experienced by implementers during the activity were the difficulty of increasing children's awareness of the importance of mastering international languages ​​in this millennial era.

Relationships Among Parental Self‐Efficacy, Home Learning Activities, and Child Skills

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate relationships among parental self‐efficacy, home learning activities, and children's socioemotional and language skills for preschool children.BackgroundHigher parental self‐efficacy is often related to better child skills and with more home learning activities. However, the relationships between parental self‐efficacy, home learning activities, and children's skills have not yet been investigated.MethodThe path models draw on data from 727 parents of preschool children (full sample: 85.1% female, 50.9% employed, 24.8% non‐German family language) and a subsample of 108 parents of preschool children who soon transition to elementary school in Germany. The self‐report data come from the German evaluation study “Language Daycare Centers.”ResultsWe found significant positive links among (a) general parental self‐efficacy with home learning activities and children's language skills, (b) language supporting parental self‐efficacy with home learning activities and children's socioemotional skills, and (c) a negative link between language supporting parental self‐efficacy and children's socioemotional problems.ConclusionThe more self‐efficacious parents felt, the more often they offered home learning activities and the higher they rated their children's language skills at age 5 years.ImplicationThe findings highlight the importance of parental self‐efficacy for engaging with children and the positive parental assessment of children's skills. Promoting parental self‐efficacy might stimulate home learning activities and improve the home learning environment.

Home food practices and Latino kindergarteners’ academic skills

Latino parents support children's academic skills through their involvement in daily living activities. Prior work has focused on conventional literacy (e.g., book reading) and numeracy activities (e.g., teaching numbers). Less-visible home activities that are high-priority, high-value cultural practices in Latino communities are food sharing (e.g., eating together) and food-related household chores (e.g., grocery shopping together). This study examined whether food sharing and food-related household chores contributed to children's academic skills beyond conventional literacy and numeracy activities, in a sample of 152 Latino parents from low-income households and their kindergarten children (M age = 67.24 months; 51.32% female). At the beginning of kindergarten, parents completed a home learning activities questionnaire and children's literacy and math skills were assessed. We found that food sharing, but not food-related household chores, positively related to children's literacy skills (vocabulary), beyond conventional literacy and numeracy activities. Food sharing and food-related household chores did not relate to children's math skills. Findings suggest the need to consider food sharing and food-related household chores as part of the constellation of Latino home learning activities that are likely to support children's academic skills.

Profiles of home language experiences of Spanish-English dual language learners in migrant and seasonal head start programs

Children from migrant and seasonal farmworker (MSFW) families are among the most educationally disadvantaged and underserved groups in the United States; however, they have received limited research attention. Using a large nationally representative sample of MSFW children in Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) programs, this study offered national portraits of MSHS Spanish-English speaking children's language experience profiles in their homes. Preschool-aged Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs; N = 280) were classified into two distinct profiles: (1) the Bilingual Exposure group (58.9%), comprising DLLs who had Spanish-English exposure from both adults and children, and (2) the Adult-Spanish, Child-Bilingual Exposure group (41.1%), consisting of DLLs who had Spanish-dominant exposure from adults and exposure to both languages from other children. Compared to the Adult-Spanish, Child-Bilingual Exposure group, children in the Bilingual Exposure group were more likely to come from non-immigrant families, had mothers with higher educational levels, and engaged in more home learning activities. When literacy skills were compared, the Adult-Spanish, Child-Bilingual Exposure group presented higher Spanish letter-word identification skills than the Bilingual Exposure group. No group differences were found in English letter-word identification and bilingual auditory comprehension. Our findings suggest the importance of Spanish language experience at home and call for tailoring educational approaches that consider the diverse home experiences of DLLs attending MSHS.

Parental Involvement on Home Schooling of Basic Level Children in Nepal

This article explores the Parental Involvement on Home Schooling Practice of Basic Level children during and after COVID in Nepal. Many nations put emergency preparations into action because of COVID-19, including lockdowns and closing of schools. Families are now needed to support their children's learning at home due to the new circumstances that have greatly impacted them. COVID pandemic forced students' schools to close, schools are requiring hybrid homeschooling methods. Analyzing parents' impressions of them at-home involvement in their kids' education was the goal of the current study. For the characteristics of home learning, parental involvement, and pupils' learning activities, a basic qualitative method based on interviews and a small number of observations was used. Nine parents with kids in elementary school were used as a sample group for the data collection. Findings showed that parents helped their children during the epidemic by primarily keeping an eye on their focus in class and helping those complete tasks. However, a number of factors seem to play a substantial role in determining parental engagement time, effort, motivation, support for instruction, and learning environment creation. The results also show that parents especially of elementary school children must commit a large amount of time in preparing them for home school activities. The discussion of the implications for policies, schools, and families aims to support children's learning and the success of homeschooling.

Children's pre-academic school readiness and home learning activities: a moderated-mediation analysis of home visiting.

The current study explores the relation between parent involvement and children's school readiness for 568 families enrolled in the Home Instruction of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program in Texas. Parent involvement in children's learning is a focus of the HIPPY curriculum. In this analysis, conditional process models were run to examine the relations between children's school readiness and engagement in home learning activities, parents' education level, program language (English or Spanish), both before and after completing a year of the program. At pretest but not posttest, program language moderated the direct relation between parents' education level and children's school readiness and parents with high levels of education were more likely to engage their children in educational activities. Engagement in home learning activities was associated with school readiness regardless of parents' education level and language. These findings provide a better understanding of the variables associated with school readiness for HIPPY families, indicating the importance of home learning activities-a variable that may be more amenable to change within intervention programs. Thus, focusing on home learning activities may contribute to decreasing discrepancies in children's preparedness for school entry that are generally identified across language and parent education. Findings may have practical implications for other home visitor programs working with similar populations.

“We don’t have things for counting”: An exploration of early numeracy skills and home learning experiences of children growing up in poverty in South Africa

A child’s home environment has been shown to be related to the development of early numeracy skills in some countries. However, significant relationships between home learning environment and math achievement have not consistently been found, and likely vary across different cultural and socio-political contexts. Here we explored the home environment and early numeracy skills of 243 children (3-5 years), who were not attending preschool programmes in very low-income settings in Cape Town, South Africa. Caregivers completed a questionnaire including information regarding experiences of children in the home; children completed a number identification task, a counting task and the Give-N task. The amount of resources in the home learning environment (e.g. the number of books and toys), frequency of home learning activities caregivers did with their children, and caregiver levels of education and income were not associated with number knowledge. While the home learning environment has been shown to be important for developing early numeracy skills in previous research, this study suggests that factors other than the home learning environment may also be important targets to foster numeracy skills and school readiness in low-income settings in South Africa.

Associations between parental well-being and early learning at home before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: observations from the China Family Panel Studies.

COVID-19-related lockdowns and preschool closures resulted in many young children spending all their time at home. Some parents had to manage child care while working from home, and increased demands may have led them to experience considerable stress. Evidence indicates that among parents with young children, those who had pre-existing mental and physical conditions adapted less well than other parents. We considered associations between parental well-being and the home learning environment for young children. We leveraged data from the nationally representative China Family Panel Studies. We analyzed longitudinal data collected before (2018) and during (2020) the pandemic. Participants were parents of 1,155 preschoolers (aged 3-5 years in 2020). Moderated mediation models were conducted. Maternal and paternal psychological well-being, depression, physical health, and physical illness in 2018 and 2020 were predictors. The frequency of marital and intergenerational conflicts in 2020 were mediators. Primary caregiver-reported engagement in home learning activities and family educational expenditure and parent-reported time spent on child care in 2020 were outcome variables. The number of COVID-19 cases in each province 3 months before the 2020 assessment was the moderator. Child, parental, and household characteristics and urbanicity were covariates. Controlling for covariates, improvements in parental psychological well-being predicted more home learning activities and increases in paternal depression predicted less time spent by fathers on child care. Negative changes in maternal physical health predicted less family educational expenditure and mothers spending more time on child care. Family conflicts mediated the association between maternal physical illness in 2018 and family educational expenditure. The number of COVID-19 cases in a province (i) was positively associated with mothers spending more time on child care, (ii) moderated the association of improvements in maternal physical health and mothers spending less time on child care, and (iii) moderated the association of family conflicts and more family educational expenditure. The findings indicate that decreased parental psychological and physical well-being foretells reductions in monetary and non-monetary investment in early learning and care at home. Regional pandemic risk undermines maternal investment in early learning and care, especially for those with pre-existing physical conditions.

Mothers' and fathers' engagement in math activities with their toddler sons and daughters: The moderating role of parental math beliefs.

Parents' beliefs about the importance of math predicts their math engagement with their children. However, most work focuses on mothers' math engagement with preschool- and school-aged children, leaving gaps in knowledge about fathers and the experiences of toddlers. We examined differences in mothers' and fathers' (N = 94) engagement in math- and non-math activities with their two-year-old girls and boys. Parents reported their beliefs about the importance of math and literacy for young children and their frequency of home learning activities. Parents of sons did not differ in their engagement in math activities from parents of daughters. Mothers reported engaging more frequently in math activities with their toddlers than fathers did, but the difference reduced when parents endorsed stronger beliefs about the importance of math for children. Even at very early ages, children experience vastly different opportunities to learn math in the home, with math-related experiences being shaped by both parent gender and parents' beliefs.

Preschool experiences and home learning environments of migrant children in urban China.

Internal migration and urban expansion, hallmarks of rapid urbanization in China, have led to an increasing number of children with diverse backgrounds in cities. Cities now include migrants from rural and urban areas, and children from "urban villages" in addition to "urban locals". Parents of young children who migrate from rural to urban areas leave their children behind in rural areas ("left-behind" children) or take them along with them. In recent years, increasing parental migration from one urban area to another has also led to children being "left-behind" in urban areas. This study examined the preschool experiences and home learning environments of rural-origin migrants, urban-origin migrants, and rural-origin locals in comparison to urban locals, leveraging data from the nationally representative China Family Panel Studies (2012-2018) with 2,446 3- to 5-year-olds residing in urban areas. Regression model results indicated that children living in cities who held a rural household registration certificate (hukou) were less likely to attend publically funded preschools and experienced less stimulating home learning environments than urban local children. After controlling for family characteristics (i) rural-origin locals remained less likely to participate in preschool and experienced fewer home learning activities than urban locals; and (ii) there were no differences in preschool experiences and home learning environments between rural-origin migrants and urban locals. Mediation analyses suggested that the relation between hukou status and the home learning environment was mediated by parental absence. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Families with young children during the COVID-19 pandemic-The importance of family type, perceived partnership roles, parental stress, and social support for changes in the home learning environment during lockdown.

Beginning in March 2020, the lockdown precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many challenges, especially for families with young children. Many children had little or no access to institutional education. Therefore, they were even more dependent on their parents providing them with home learning activities (HLA) to support their development. We examined the adaptability of families with regard to changes in parents' provision of HLA in traditional two-parent families, single parent families, and large families compared to before the lockdown. We focused on family resources, such as a supportive distribution of roles within the partnership, or social support, as predicting factors of adaptability in N = 8,513 families with children aged 18-69 months. In addition, we considered parental stress as a further influencing factor. The cross-sectional data depicts families from a nationwide online survey, which we conducted during spring 2020 in Germany. We found that (a) all three family types offered their children more learning activities at home, albeit with slight differences between the families. However, (b) we identified differences in the factors influencing families' adaptability: Across all family types, we found slight to medium negative relations between adaptability and parental stress. The relations were most evident in large families. Furthermore, social support exhibits somewhat positive relations to the adaptability of large families. For adaptability in single-parent families, gender differences were initially evident. Among single fathers, the change in parental HLA was stronger than among single mothers. However, this relation disappeared when we took parental stress and social support into account. For traditional two-parent families and single parents, our analyses revealed (c) barely significant relations between the investigated predictors and changes in HLA during lockdown. Overall, our study confirms that high stress limits the adaptability of providing HLA in families and that social support mitigates negative relations between stress and the provision of HLA, especially in large families. In order to develop effective and needs-based family support programs, it is therefore important to help parents cope with stress and provide them with low-threshold social support. The extent to which these services need to be adapted to different family types must be surveyed in more depth.

Urban-rural differences in the relationship between stunting, preschool attendance, home learning support, and school readiness: A study in Côte d'Ivoire.

Stunted physical growth during early childhood is a marker of chronic undernutrition, and the adverse life circumstances that underlie it. These have the potential to disrupt normal brain development and the acquisition of foundational cognitive, language, social and motor skills. Stunting is prevalent in most low-and middle-income countries. Because the prevention of stunting requires large-scale structural and attitudinal changes, several psycho-educational interventions have been developed to mitigate the adverse association between early stunting and skill development. However, the resource-intensive nature of custom-designed interventions limit their sustainability and scalability in resource-limited settings. This study explored the possibility that available resources that promote positive development (existing preschool education programs, and no- or low-cost home-based learning activities and resources) may protect against any negative association between stunting and the acquisition of foundational skills required for academic learning and adaptation at school. Data for 36-to 59-month-old children (n = 3,522; M = 46.7 months; 51.2% male; 74.1% rural) were drawn from the most recent Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey conducted in Côte d'Ivoire (MICS5, 2016). Stunting was assessed using the WHO Child Growth Standards. Preschool attendance and home learning activities and resources were assessed by maternal report. School readiness was assessed using the 8-item form of the Early Child Development Index (ECDI). A high percentage of children met the criteria for stunting (28.5%; 19.7% moderate; 8.8% severe). There were marked urban-rural differences in the prevalence of stunting, rates of preschool attendance, home learning activities and resources, children's school readiness scores, and the relationships between stunting, the protective factors and school readiness scores. These urban-rural differences in ECDI scores could be fully explained by differences between these settings in stunting and the protective factors. However, only two protective factors (access to books and home-based activities that promote learning) made independent contributions to variance in ECDI scores. There was tentative evidence that stunted children whose homes provided highly diverse learning activities and multiple types of learning resources were more likely than those who did not to have a high level of school readiness. Capitalizing on the existing practices of families that show positive deviance in caregiving may provide a basis for culturally appropriate, low-cost interventions to improve school readiness among children in low- and middle-income countries, including children with stunted growth.

Me, my child and Covid‐19: Parents' reflections on their child's experiences of lockdown in the UK and China

AbstractOver the past 2 years, the world has been living through the unprecedented Covid‐19 pandemic. Children have had to adapt to online classrooms and lessons of some sort, and many parents have been forced to work from home while supervising their child's home learning activities. We used participatory visual methods to understand how children and their parents have coped during this time, engaging parents as co‐researchers to ask their child to photograph and/or draw pictures that represent their daily lived experiences over the lockdown period. We then asked parents to interview their children (24 in total, 13 in the UK and 11 in China), using the children's artwork as prompts, and finally we interviewed parents. Through the data collection process, parents captured their children's experiences and feelings since the coronavirus struck. The data was analysed using Foucault's theory of discourse to provide unique and comparative insights into children's experiences in the UK and China during this exceptional time. Ours is the first study to integrate parents' and children's views of Covid‐19, drawing on parents as co‐researchers. We argue that combining the data collection methods and drawing on parents as co‐researchers enabled parents to gain insights into an understanding of their child's lived experiences throughout the pandemic that might otherwise have been unknown. These insights were often unexpected for parents, and have been grouped around themes of parental relief, anxiety and understanding.

Preschool teacher-parent communication during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown: Relation to the parental engagement at home

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the education system moved to an online format. Parents of pre-schoolers therefore became the primary educators responsible for the sustainability of their children?s education. Communication with teachers was the only available support resource. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between preschool teacher-parent communication (frequency, content of exchange, and satisfaction with the teacher?s support) and parental engagement in home-learning activities. An online questionnaire was sent to 1646 parents of children attending preschools. Multiple regression analysis indicated that the communication frequency between parents and preschool teachers was a significant predictor of parent engagement in home-learning activities, but the effects were small. Unexpectedly, parents more engaged in face-to-face home-learning activities were less satisfied with the teacher support. The study suggests that one-way digital communication with a clear role division between experts and parents has a limited effect on the parents? engagement and sustainability of preschool education in times of crisis.

The unique and compensatory effects of home and classroom learning activities on Migrant and Seasonal Head Start children's Spanish and English emergent literacy skills.

Children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFW) are among the most underprivileged, underserved groups in the United States. The current study examined how home and classroom language and literacy experiences uniquely and interactively contributed to MSFW children's emergent literacy skills in English and Spanish. Participants were 255 Spanish-English dual language learning children (M age = 49 mon; 98.3% Latino/Hispanic) and their parents and 47 teachers, drawn from the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) Study. Parents reported how often the target children engaged in language and literacy activities (i.e., teaching letters, words, or numbers, book-reading, singing, and storytelling) with their family members. Teachers reported how often the target children engaged in classroom language and literacy activities (e.g., book-reading, learning letters, retelling stories, etc.). Children's emergent literacy skills in English and Spanish were assessed by standard tests. After controlling for demographic variables, home and classroom language and literacy activities uniquely predicted children's emergent literacy skills in Spanish, but not in English. Additionally, home and classroom activities compensated one another in supporting children's English and Spanish emergent literacy development. That is, language and literacy activities in one context showed a stronger effect for children who experienced less frequent activities in the other context. Together, these findings shed light on ways to support MSFW children's emergent literacy skills and reveal the importance of integrating and connecting home and school learning experiences.

Home and school interventions aided at-risk students' literacy during Covid-19: a longitudinal analysis.

We examined whether different parent- and teacher-related factors had an effect on at-risk children's reading development during the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Seventy Grade 1 English-speaking Canadian children (28 females, 42 males; M age = 6.60, SD = 0.46) who were at-risk for reading difficulties were administered word and pseudoword reading, nonverbal IQ, and phonological awareness tasks before the school closures (February 2020; Time 1). Reading tasks were administered again when they returned to school in September 2020 (Time 2). In April-May 2020, their parents (n = 70) and teachers (n = 40) filled out a questionnaire on the home literacy environment and the frequency of teaching reading and providing reading materials, respectively. Results of multilevel regression analyses showed that children's reading enjoyment and home learning activities predicted both word and pseudoword reading at Time 2. Differentiation of instruction for struggling readers also predicted children's pseudoword reading at Time 2. These findings reinforce the important role of parents in their children's early reading development particularly when the typical agents of instruction (i.e., teachers) have less time and opportunities to interact with their students because of the pandemic.

Home learning: an exploration of parents perspectives

ABSTRACT Much home learning research explores the benefits from the perspectives of the child or staff. Less is written about how parent’s view home learning. This became more noticeable recently when nurseries closed because of Covid-19 lockdown. Staff had to design digital home learning activities at speed to help parents support their children’s learning and development while maintaining their relationships with parents. However, we realised we did not know enough about what parents would find helpful and decided to seek their views to categorise their perspectives of home learning and therefore provide more relevant home learning. This paper records a small-scale explorative study in a group of 9 London nurseries where using ethnographic interviews, we sought the views of 15 sets of parents. The study presented some early evidence that parent’s views of home learning can be categorised and suggests an emerging typology made from four groups of parents whose views of home learning reflect their levels of confidence and experience but for some, their views appear to be filtered through the current public debate in England about school readiness.

Introducing the Home Learning Environment Questionnaire and examining the profiles of home learning environments in Greece

The Home Learning Environment (HLE) plays a prominent role in children’s development. Several measures have been developed to assess its quality; however, most of them seem to mainly focus on specific aspects of the HLE construct. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Home Learning Environment Questionnaire (HLEQ); and to examine the characteristics of the HLE and the HLE profiles using the new instrument in the Greek educational context. The HLEQ is a parent-reported measure addressing both activities and interactions, comprising of six factors that are considered key elements of the HLE: indoor, outdoor, and digital learning activities, warmth/support, conflict, and inconsistent discipline. The development of HLEQ followed a robust methodological approach, including the collection of an initial pool of items, expert review to examine its content validity, and piloting. The HLEQ was administrated to 814 parents (Mage = 37.86 years, SD = 4.84) of children (Mage = 64.12 months, SD = 7.19) attending 84 state funded kindergartens in Greece. A cross-validation approach was used to examine the factor structure of the HLEQ. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling procedures were implemented. Latent profile analysis was employed to identify the HLE profiles. Results provided initial support for the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the HLEQ. The HLEQ displayed good psychometric properties for measuring the quality of home learning activities and home learning interactions in the contemporary early HLE. Four HLE profiles were revealed, representing different parent-child interaction patterns during the learning activities. Limitations and implications for policy and practice are discussed.