How to Help Your Child Fall in Love with School Through Playful Learning

When School Feels Like a Struggle, Fun Can Be the Way In

You’re not alone if getting your child excited about school feels like pulling teeth some days. Maybe you've heard the dreaded “I hate school” more than once. Maybe homework is a daily battle, or mornings start with stomachaches that magically disappear by the afternoon. As a parent, it’s heartbreaking—and exhausting. You want to raise a curious, confident learner, but the school experience isn’t matching up with your hopes.

Here’s a gentle truth: children rarely dislike learning. What wears them down is the way learning is sometimes presented—dry, rigid, uninspired. When we bring in play, imagination, and movement, school begins to feel less like a chore and more like a world of discovery.

Switching the Lens: Learning Through Play

Alexis, a mother of two in Marseille, once shared with me how her 8-year-old son, Thomas, would come home furious over his spelling test mistakes. He was bright, but anxious—he’d shut down if he got just one item wrong. “He thought learning was about being perfect,” she told me. What helped shift things? A game they called “Mission Spelling.” Each word was a code he needed to decipher to unlock “secret missions” around the house. Suddenly, spelling wasn’t a test—it was an adventure.

Play has the power to transform. When kids experience success and joy during learning, their relationship with school softens. School becomes another opportunity to explore their world, not a place where they are judged for what they can’t yet do.

You might explore other ways to learn math through play—with kitchen measurements, Lego budgeting, or scavenger hunts that reinforce fractions and numbers. The focus isn’t on turning your home into a classroom; it’s about weaving learning into the fabric of daily life, gently and consistently.

Using Storytelling to Spark Intrinsic Motivation

Children thrive on stories. They are natural-born storytellers and listeners. If your child recoils when asked to review their science notes but lights up during bedtime tales, that’s useful information. Use it. Try turning their lessons into stories—where they become the protagonist.

For instance, maybe they’re learning about the solar system. Ask: “What if you were the first kid to visit another planet on a space adventure? What would you see? Who would you meet?” Suddenly, the planets aren’t just bullet points in a notebook—they're companions on a cosmic journey.

The Skuli app—a tool we discovered on a whim and now use during car rides—lets you transform lessons into audio adventures that call your child by name and place them inside the action. For auditory or imaginative learners, this kind of storytelling can be a gamechanger.

And here’s what’s beautiful: when the material is woven into narrative, your child begins to remember not because they studied, but because they felt something.

Claiming Small, Consistent Joys

We often feel pressure to make learning “productive.” But not every moment needs to be. Sometimes it’s the detours that yield the most growth. If your child loves drawing, invite them to illustrate a scene from a history lesson. If they adore music, help them write a song using new vocabulary words. These aren’t distractions—they are bridges.

Reframe what success looks like. Learning isn’t a straight road with good grades as mile markers. It’s a winding path full of questions, laughter, confusion, and breakthroughs. When your child looks forward to learning—even if it’s through silly rhymes about multiplication—that’s a win. Balancing joy and learning is simpler than most educational systems allow, but as a parent, you can offer that space at home.

Tuning In to Your Child’s Specific Needs

No single approach works for every child. One may need movement to stay focused. Another may learn best by listening. If your child seems unable to sit through traditional reading—but can repeat word-for-word the dialogue from their favorite animated show—why not turn written lessons into audio?

Use your phone to record lessons in your voice, or take a photo of notes and use tools (like the ones in Skuli) to create audio formats they can replay anytime. Some children even create their own mini quizzes or play “teacher” with siblings or stuffed animals. The more ownership they feel, the more connected they become to the content.

Need more inspiration for tools that make learning feel joyful at home? We've gathered a few fun and effective digital tools here.

The Emotional Side of Loving School

Sometimes, a child’s aversion to school has little to do with lessons and a lot to do with emotions. Fear of failure. Comparison. Feeling misunderstood.

This is where your presence as a parent makes all the difference. Validate their experience. Show them that learning is allowed to be messy, confusing, even boring at times. But also show them the wonder in it—the thrill in problem-solving, the joy of a story well told, the pride in mastering something after three, five, ten tries.

The goal isn’t to make your home a replica of school, nor to sugarcoat topics that are genuinely hard. Rather, it’s to create moments where your child sees themselves as capable, curious, and wonderfully equipped to learn.

If you’re navigating academic stress, this reflection on how to support your child through challenges with joy may also help.

One Step at a Time

Helping your child fall in love with school doesn’t require a full lifestyle overhaul. Begin with one playful moment each day. One question asked differently. One lesson turned into a story. Slowly, those moments build trust, engagement, and a renewed curiosity about learning.

And on the tough days—and there will be many—remind yourself: you are not just helping your child get through school. You’re helping them build a lifelong relationship with learning. One joyful, playful, imaginative step at a time.