Getting your child admission to a good school is not easy. If you want your child to breeze through admission tests, you need to help her learn in such a way that the knowledge is so ingrained that she doesn't even need to think to remember answers. Little babies don't have ready access to knowledge, and their only source is play schools or parents. If you don't send your child to a play school, try to compensate by spending time teaching your child yourself. Some children can recite one nursery rhyme after another at the age of five and can count up to a hundred, while other children don't know a square from a triangle. Who do you think is going to ace the school interview?

To help your baby improve her chances of admission to a good school, you need to focus on improving her vocabulary and social skills

Social skills

Help your baby develop social skills from the outset, by taking her outdoors as often as possible. Even if she cannot join the other children in their play, just hold her and let her watch them play. Children will interact with her, and this will help further her development. Also, invite other parents with babies over to your place.

Vocabulary

Read to your baby every night. Most babies love books that rhyme, so invest in these. Your baby's brain is growing and developing at an amazing rate, and if you want your baby to grow up into an intelligent adult (which parent doesn't?) it makes sense for you to start working at it right now.

Children should enjoy their childhood, so you should strive to make learning fun for them. Here's are some tips:

Play

Avoid structured leaning environments for your child. Showing your baby pictures of different shapes and then repeatedly pointing and monotonously stating "square, square…" will not work very well. Instead, try this: Cut out a number of shapes and throw them on the rug. Then, ask your child to pick out all the squares. As your baby grows older, you could even start hiding the shapes and having her go out and look for them. Do the same with numbers and alphabets.

Toys

Purchase as many toys and games as you can. Make sure they are age appropriate so your baby gains a lot out of them. As your baby grows older, invest in educational board games. Good examples are Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and so on. If you want your child to learn the names of all the states in India, wouldn't it be far easier to teach her by getting her a jigsaw puzzle of the map of India?

One of the common questions many parents have is when they should start teaching their baby things like names of colours, shapes, numbers, alphabets and so on. A common misconception is that babies don't really start learning much until they are a year or older. In fact, babies start learning from the time they are in their mother's womb so it's never too early!