According to a new research lead by Dr Simone Lehrl of the University of Bamberg, a good home learning environment during the early years has effects until adolescence, and beyond. This study, one of the first to provide details about the importance of early learning at home, reveals that preschoolers whose parents regularly read with them score better on math tests at age 12 and continue to have better results in this field later in life.
Additional positive news, young students who benefit from early stimulation at home tend to develop better skills not only in mathematics but also in language in secondary school. "Our results underline the great importance of exposing children to books for development not just in literacy but numeracy too: early language skills not only improve children's reading but also boost their mathematical abilities," said Dr Lehrl.
Literacy activities not only enhance reading comprehension and language skills, but also number understanding and math skills. Book exposure and verbal interactions, like talking about numbers and counting, are also linked with increased math outcomes at age 12. The consequences also worked the other way, with the quality of parent-child interaction in math being correlated with the increase of a child's language abilities.
Picture: Mary Agnes, by Robert Henri (Wikimedia Commons, w/Effects)
