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Encouraging learning

Encouraging learning: Preschoolers (3-5 years)

Preschoolers can talk about yesterday, imagine tomorrow and argue about the rules of a game. That makes this a great age for stories, questions, board games and practice at waiting.

Start here

  1. Talk about things that are not right in front of you: what happened today, what might happen tomorrow, how a character in a story felt.
  2. Read together and ask questions that let your child do some of the telling.148
  3. Play a number board game or count real things together most days.
  4. When your child learns a new word, ask for it again a little later, then again the next day.138
  5. Keep screens to 1 hour or less a day of good programs, watched together when you can, and none in the hour before bed.110

Talk: beyond the here and now

Preschoolers can talk about the past, the future and things that are not in the room. In one study that observed 50 families, parents’ use of this kind of talk with preschoolers, such as telling stories, was linked with larger vocabularies a year later, beyond how much the parents talked.152 Mixed evidence

Back-and-forth still matters. In a brain-imaging study of 36 children aged 4-6, those who had more conversational turns with adults at home showed more activity in a language area of the brain while listening to stories, and that activity helped explain the link between their language experience and their verbal skills.94 Mixed evidence Everything was measured at one point in time, so it cannot show cause.

Asking also helps memory. In two experiments, preschoolers learning names for toys remembered about twice as many when they practiced recalling the names at gradually longer gaps, while a reward did not significantly improve their learning.138 So when your child learns a new word, ask for it again a few minutes later, at dinner and the next day.

At dinner Remember the bird we saw at the park? What was it called again?

Read: hand over the story

A meta-analysis of studies on how often parents read to preschoolers linked it with language growth, early literacy and reading achievement, whatever the family’s socioeconomic status, though the link seemed to shrink once children could read on their own.130 In another, children’s exposure to books explained 12% of the differences in spoken language skills in preschool and kindergarten, a link rather than proof of cause.147

Dialogic reading, where you ask questions and let your child do more of the telling, gave a moderate vocabulary boost over ordinary reading in one meta-analysis, but a much smaller one at ages 4-5,148 while another meta-analysis found child age unrelated to how much book-sharing programs helped.136 Mixed evidence The questions are worth asking anyway: they turn reading into a conversation.

  • Ask open questions: What’s happening here? Why did she do that?
  • After a page or two, ask what happened: What did the fox do first?
  • Let your child “read” a familiar book to you from the pictures.
Halfway through a story What do you think the fox will do now?

Play: guide, don’t take over

The American Academy of Pediatrics describes play with parents and other children as a singular opportunity to build social, emotional, thinking, language and self-regulation skills.108

In guided play, your child leads and you gently steer toward something to learn. In a meta-analysis of studies with children averaging 1 to 8 years old, guided play did better than direct teaching on early math, shapes and switching between tasks, and better than free play on words for space and position, but no differently on other key outcomes.154 Mixed evidence

  • Build a goal into play: a store with price tags, a treasure hunt with picture clues.
  • Ask “I wonder” questions, then let your child try, and step back when play is going well.
Playing store This apple costs 3 coins. Can you count out 3 coins for me?

Praise: what they did, not who they are

In role-play studies with 5- and 6-year-olds, praise or criticism of the child as a person led to more helplessness and self-blame after a later setback than feedback on how the child went about the task,38 and in laboratory studies, fifth graders praised for intelligence persisted less and did worse after failure than those praised for effort.149 Mixed evidence At home, though, one study of 53 families found that parents’ praise of their toddlers’ traits was not linked with fixed beliefs years later.140 Mixed evidence

The practical advice is the same either way: describe what your child did, and treat mistakes as information about what to try next. For praise in everyday discipline, see Specific praise and attention.

  • Name the effort or the strategy: “You kept going even when it got hard.” “You tried a new way, and it worked.”
  • Ask about the process: “How did you figure that out?”
After a mistake That didn’t work. What could we try instead?

Motivation: choices, not prizes

In a 1973 field experiment, children who already enjoyed an activity and did it to earn a promised award later showed less interest in it than children who got a surprise award or none.143 Meta-analyses disagree about how general this is: one found that rewards for doing, finishing or doing well at a task undermined later interest, and that tangible rewards tended to be more harmful for children than for college students,134 while another concluded that rewards are generally not harmful, with harm showing up when tangible rewards are promised in advance, loosely tied to performance, for tasks that are already interesting.131 Mixed evidence

Choice and support have firmer backing. Across 41 studies, having a choice raised motivation, effort and performance, with a bigger boost to motivation for children than for adults,46 and a meta-analysis of 36 studies linked parents’ support for autonomy with higher achievement, more self-driven motivation and better psychological health.157 Let your child choose the order of tasks, explain the reasons behind rules, and see Offering choices for more.

Before cleaning up Cars first or books first? You choose.

Focus and self-control

Executive functions are the mental skills behind focus and self-control. A review names three core ones, holding back an impulse, holding information in mind and switching flexibly, and notes that stress, lack of sleep, loneliness and lack of exercise each impair them.72 In a study that followed 1,000 children from birth to age 32, those with more self-control as children had better health and finances and less criminal offending as adults, independent of intelligence and social class.87 Mixed evidence

These skills can be practiced, but lasting gains are not proven. A review of programs for ages 4-12 reports that successful ones involve repeated practice with gradually harder challenges, and that children with weaker skills benefit most.135 Mixed evidence A series of meta-analyses of programs for children up to age 12 found that the skills can be fostered but no convincing evidence that the benefits last, and that building them into other activities worked as well as or better than direct training.155 Mixed evidence

Games that ask your child to wait, remember or switch rules are easy practice: Simon Says, Red Light Green Light, freeze dance, memory cards, and pretend play with roles, such as store or doctor.

Numbers: games and counting

In one experiment, preschoolers from low-income families (average age 5.4) who played a number board game with a straight track for about an hour in all got better at comparing numbers, estimating on a number line, counting and recognizing numerals, with gains still there 9 weeks later; classmates who played the same game with colors instead of numbers did not improve.150 Mixed evidence

Counting things your child can see, especially groups of 4 to 10, was the kind of number talk linked with understanding what number words mean.139 Mixed evidence Across 64 studies, a richer home math environment was linked with higher math achievement (average r = .13, with large differences between studies).133

Playing a board game You rolled a 2. You’re on 5, so count on: six, seven. Now you’re on 7!

Sleep and screens

For ages 3-5, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends 10-13 hours of sleep per 24 hours, naps included, in a statement the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed, and links getting enough sleep regularly with better attention, behavior, learning, memory and emotional regulation.123

The AAP’s 2016 statement on young children and media recommended no more than 1 hour a day of high-quality programs for children over 2, ideally watched with a parent, plus screen-free meals and no screens in the hour before bed.110 In a study of 2,441 Canadian children, more screen time at 3 was linked with lower developmental screening scores at 5, both reported by mothers.86 Mixed evidence The AAP’s newest policy, from 2026, notes that most digital platforms are designed to boost engagement and profit, not children’s health and development.122 See Screens and Bedtime battles.

How sure is this?

  • Fairly solid: reading together, offering choices and practicing recall.13046138126
  • Expert guidance: the sleep hours and screen limits.123110
  • Debated: whether praising the person harms motivation, and how widely rewards undermine interest.140134131 Mixed evidence
  • Open questions: whether executive function gains last, and whether dialogic reading helps less at 4-5.155148136 Mixed evidence
  • Single studies: the talk, board-game and self-control findings each rest on one study.15215087 Mixed evidence

For school programs that teach a “growth mindset”, see the evidence notes on the main Encouraging learning page.

Sources

The small numbers in the text point to these sources. Each one has a full entry on the Research page.

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