NET Teaching – Learning Activities for Toddlers

Natural Environment Teaching (NET) Activities

Let’s talk about NET teaching or Natural Environment Teaching. NET teaching is all about incorporating learning within the natural environment. So while your child is playing and having a great time, we can embed some skills so that this way your child is learning while they’re having a great time.

We can incorporate goals into play. We can incorporate this into the learner’s preferred activities. It’s a great way to teach new skills, strengthen already existing skills, and just having a great time and bonding with your child. Here are some tips that you can work with your child in the natural environment.

Goal Oriented Play

First incorporate goals during play. The beauty about NET is that it’s very flexible, which means that you can be creative and change the environment around so that you can incorporate goals in play. This may mean something such as just going and keeping some toys out of your child’s way so that this way they have to go and ask for it, or at least make eye contact for the toy.

So you’re going to encourage some language, you can ask, what color is it? What sound does this make? What does this do? Do this, watch me and then have your child imitate what you’re doing. So there’s lots of goals that you can incorporate while your child is playing.

Use Their Motivations

The next tip is, use your child’s motivation. What are they motivated by? What are they interested in, right at that moment, use that to build your child’s excitement for what you’re about to do.

Work with it, so if your child is interested in stacking blocks, you can go and have some of the blocks by you and have them ask for the blocks or point to the blocks. You can ask them what color the blocks are. You can can have them imitate you stacking the blocks. So whatever your child is interested in, that’s what you want to go with.

Incorporate New Concepts

Number three is change it up. You can actually also introduce some new things into your child’s environment during this time. This makes sessions fun and exciting. Maybe they’ve had the same toys for a little while. You can bring in something different and that’s going to be really exciting for that child. And then think about before you introduce that, what can I ask my child or what things can I do with my child so that I can promote language, eye contact and so on.

Learn Everywhere

Number four, learning and teaching can be done anywhere, this doesn’t have to be done at a table. It should be done on the floor, it can be done on your child’s bedroom. It can be done at a restaurant, in the supermarket, whatever is going to be motivating and exciting and be able to have you and your child bond that’s where we want to do these activities.

Enjoy the Activity

And last one is just have fun, have fun and enjoy the moment. Turn off your phone, turn off the TV and just be present with your child. Look at their eyes, see where their eyes are going, look at their facial expressions. That is a way that you can then determine which things you want to do.

Maybe if you’ve asked too many questions, you can step back and just play, but just be present and enjoy. So these are all tips that you can go and use to help build your child’s learning repertoires while you’re in the natural environment. It’s fun for your child. Hopefully it’ll be fun for you as well.

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